SK Telecom plans a major expansion of its AI infrastructure by building cutting-edge data centers in Southeast Asia in addition to Korea, aiming to capture a larger share of the global AI data center market.

CEO Jung, in a public statement, outlined SKT’s vision for turning SKT’s AI press conference into a broad deal network that strengthens its AI leadership and collaboration with partners.

The company will mobilize a global data center push with emphasis on AI, LNG, and advanced cooling and energy solutions to support scalable AI deployments.

The long-term AWS collaboration accelerates Edge AI and AI-RAN, bridging AIDC and on-device AI via edge computing and intelligent telecom technologies.

CEO Jeong outlined plans to preempt the edge AI market through joint R&D with NVIDIA and Samsung Electronics, targeting AI-RAN and edge computing capabilities.

A collaboration with NVIDIA and government/academic partners will demonstrate AI-RAN technology and position it as critical infrastructure for Physical AI, boosting Korea’s manufacturing competitiveness through digital twins and robotics AI.

SK Telecom plans to collaborate with AWS on edge AI R&D and to leverage the combined technologies to enhance its edge AI capabilities, accelerating AI-RAN and on-device AI integration.

Financial and operational plans include commercializing AIDC solution packages (out-rack, clustering, in-rack, energy) to streamline and speed up AIDC construction by internalizing four core AI infrastructure technologies with global partners.

Recent milestones include signing a memorandum of understanding with AWS for SK AIDC in Ulsan, creating Korea’s largest GPU cluster 'Haein,' and selection by MSIT for the Proprietary AI Foundation Model Project.

SK Telecom focuses on three major AI domains—applications, data center solutions, and industry-specific initiatives, including a manufacturing-focused AI cloud and a factory robot foundation model developed with NVIDIA for SK hynix manufacturing.

SK Group aims to build an AI transformation across its manufacturing arms by acquiring over 2,000 NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs to support a Manufacturing AI Cloud.

Aero AI and AI-RAN networks are being deployed as a strategic initiative; IBM? (note: refer to original: details about AWS friend frontlines) via AWS collaboration to accelerate AI DC growth.