SK Telecom revamps for the AI era

• SK Telecom has long been positioning itself as an AI company
• Earlier this year it unveiled its AI pyramid strategy
• Now it has revealed plans to reorganise the business into seven divisions to capitalise in its AI and communications capabilities

Having already positioned itself as an AI company and shared its AI pyramid strategy, South Korea’s SK Telecom (SKT) has now unveiled a new corporate structure, comprising seven business divisions, that it believes will enable it to capitalise on its primary growth opportunities. 

The seven units are divided into three communications business divisions, which will “strengthen the core competitiveness of the telecommunications business”, and four AI business divisions that will “increase the execution power of the AI ​​business and create tangible results,” according to SKT. 

The business divisions will be supported by a shared infrastructure group – including its networks, an AT/DT (AI transformation/digital transformation) centre, an AI R&D centre and a global A&I (alliance and investment) centre – and a shared human resources unit.  

The communications business divisions are:

• Mobile network operator (MNO)
• Wireline/media (including subsidiary SK Broadband)
• Enterprise 

The AI business divisions are: 

• Adot (A. is SKT’s domestic personal AI agent)
• GPAA (global personal AI agent) – SKT is already working with Perplexity to launch its personal AI agent in the US 
• AIX [AI transformation] – this will make use of the integrated capabilities of SKT and SK C&C, the systems integration arm of the SK Group, “to create meaningful AI use cases within the group in areas such as AI business innovation, AI intelligence, AIX cloud, and AI factory, and promote expansion into global and domestic markets.”
• AI DC (datacentre) – this will include SKT’s GPU-as-a-service (GPUaaS) offering and play a key role in the company’s AI infrastructure superhighway plans.

CEO Ryu Young-sang stated: “We will make 2025 a year of ‘execution’ that will focus on communications and AI to bring about tangible results in each of our core business areas… we focused on reorganising the organisation into an execution-oriented system to achieve our vision.”

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV