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| Models try out SK Telecom's AI service A. Friends at a pop-up store at the Lotte World Adventure amusement park in Seoul, Sunday. The company said it will invest $100 million in the U.S. AI company Anthropic to further improve its capabilities in the generative AI business. Courtesy of SK Telecom |
By Baek Byung-yeul
SK Telecom will invest $100 million in U.S.-based generative AI startup company Anthropic in a bid to improve its competence in the emerging technology and further develop various language-based AI services for global markets, the mobile carrier said Sunday.
The company said it decided to invest in the U.S. company, best known for its Claude AI chatbot service, to strengthen cooperation with each other in the AI business. The announcement came a month after the company launched the Global Telecom AI Alliance with global mobile carriers including Deutsche Telekom, e& and Singtel in July, to jointly develop a telecom AI platform.
Headquartered in San Francisco, Anthropic is a generative AI-specialized company founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers. In addition to winning the investment from SK Telecom, the company recently secured investments from U.S. tech giants such as Google and Salesforce.
SK Telecom cited the U.S. company's technological prowess as the main reason for the partnership.
"Anthropic has a strong safety record with its Constitutional AI technology to minimize the harmful effects of generative AI services. In May, U.S. President Joe Biden invited the CEOs of four companies, including Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, to the White House to discuss the security and safety of AI technology," SK Telecom said.
With the investment, the two sides will jointly develop a large language model (LLM) and build an AI platform, SK Telecom said. SK Telecom owns its AI assistant service A. ― pronounced as "A dot" ― and it expects it can create more synergy by cooperating with Anthropic.
"The two companies will jointly develop a multilingual LLM for global telecommunications companies, including Korean, English, German, Japanese, Arabic, Spanish and more. SK Telecom plans to further enhance the performance of the LLM it has already developed, while expanding the new multilingual LLM model with Anthropic to demonstrate the synergy of cooperation," the company said.
Anthropic's Claude service will also be provided to Korean enterprise customers through SK Telecom. As an official partner, SK Telecom will be responsible for attracting business customers and expanding Anthropic's business here.
"With the strategic investment in Anthropic, a world-class AI technology company, we will begin our collaboration," SK Telecom CEO Ryu Young-sang said. "We plan to combine SK Telecom's Korean language AI technology with Anthropic's global AI capability to lead the AI ecosystem alongside global telecom firms."
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