Alliance members Deutsche Telekom, e& and Singtel all stand to benefit from new telco-focused AI platform
Following the launch of the Global Telco AI Alliance, co-founder South Korea’s SK Telecom (SKT) has announced an additional $100m in Google-backed AI firm Anthropic to build a large language model (LLM) customised for telcos.
The investment in Anthropic follows an initial investment from SK Telecom Venture Capital, the Silicon Valley-based venture capital arm of SKT.
Anthropic, a startup competing with OpenAI in building AI foundation models, is among the most well-funded AI firms, having raised $450 million from investors including Alphabet Inc’s Google and Spark Capital in May.
SKT and Anthropic will develop a multilingual large language model for the Telco AI Platform, which will allow for the creation of customized AI services for global telcos.
Last month, SK Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, e& and Singtel have formed the Global Telco AI Alliance which aims to make joint efforts to accelerate AI transformation in telcos. The MoU for cooperation in AI includes the co-development of a Telco AI Platform. The four telcos said they would jointly develop this platform by combining their respective technologies and capabilities.
Under the new agreement, SKT and Anthropic will jointly develop a multilingual LLM that supports languages, including Korean, English, German, Japanese, Arabic and Spanish.
By removing the need for telcos to build their own LLMs, which requires a large amount of cost and time, the Telco AI Platform will enable the members of the Global Telco AI Alliance – including Deutsche Telekom, e& and Singtel – to develop and offer AI services/apps customised to their respective markets and customers faster and more cost-effectively.
Putting money where your mouth is
In May, SKT announced it was “stepping up efforts on all fronts to transform itself into an AI company,” according to CFO and head of corporate planning Kim Jin Won at the telco’s quarterly results. SKT makes no secret about wanted to partner with foreign AI companies to achieve its aims.
The two companies will combine SKT’s AI work with Anthropic’s AI model Claude and then customise it for telco use. In particular, Anthropic will work with SKT to fine-tune Claude to telco use cases, including industry specific customer service, marketing, sales, and interactive consumer applications.
By customising the model to the telco industry, telcos will benefit from increased performance relative to the use of more general models. Jared Kaplan, a co-founder and chief science officer of Anthropic, will oversee the overall direction of the industry customization as well as the product roadmap.
Anthropic’s Claude service will also be provided to Korean enterprise customers through SKT.
“SKT has incredible ambitions to use AI to transform the telco industry. We’re excited to combine our AI expertise with SKT’s industry knowledge to build a LLM that is customized for telcos,” said Anthropic CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei. “We see industry specific LLMs as having high potential to create safer and more reliable deployments of AI technology.”
“With our strategic investment in Anthropic, a global leading AI technology company, we will be working closely with Anthropic to promote AI innovation,” said SKT CEO Ryu Young-sang. “By combining our Korean language-based LLM with Anthropic’s strong AI capabilities, we expect to create synergy and gain leadership in the AI ecosystem together with our global telco partners.”
Pictured: SKT will create more synergies by using the Anthropic partnership to influence development on its “A dot” AI-based service.