Softbank to join SK Telecom-led global AI joint venture

BARCELONA -- Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. tied up with major global telcos such as South Korea’s top mobile carrier SK Telecom Co. and Europe’s largest telecommunication service provider Deutsche Telekom AG to shake up the artificial intelligence industry currently dominated by Big Tech companies.

SK Telecom, SoftBank, Deutsche Telekom, Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. (SingTel) and the United Arab Emirates’ e& on Monday agreed to establish an AI joint venture this year at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024, the world’s top telecommunication technology event, in Barcelona, according to the South Korean company.

The joint venture is set to develop large language models (LLMs), specifically tailored to the needs of telecommunication companies, and work on the businesses based on them.

“Through the strong alliance, we will open a new era of technological innovation based on AI,” said Hideyuki Tsukuda, chief technology officer at SoftBank Corp., a telecommunications and networking subsidiary of SoftBank Group.

SK Telecom, which aims to transform itself into an AI company from a telecommunications service provider, in July 2023 set up the Global Telco AI Alliance (GTAA) with Deutsche Telekom, SingTel and e&.

The GTAA members have a combined 1.3 billion users in the world’s key markets, including the US, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Australia.

MULTINATIONAL LLMS

The five companies plan to create multinational LLMs that support various languages across the world starting from English, Korean, Japanese, German and Arabic.

“Telco LLMs will be able to understand user intentions since they understand the telecommunication industry better than normal LLMs,” said an SK Telecom official. “They will be highly used once telecommunication businesses and services are converted into those with AI.”

The GTAA members are expected to more easily expand their AI services if they combine the new businesses with the existing core competitive sectors such as mobile communications and media, industry sources in Seoul said.

The GTAA proposed some 20 other telecommunication carriers to join them.

“We aim to expand the GTAA and take the lead in the global AI ecosystem based on the joint venture,” SK Telecom CEO Ryu Young-Sang.

Write to Ji-Wun Jeong at jeong@hankyung.com
 
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.