- The SKT consortium leads the Korean government’s “Sovereign AI Foundation Model” project with AX K1, positioning Korea among the world’s top three AI powers
- AX K1: Korea’s first “teacher model” for smaller, specialized applications
- SK Telecom views AI as a public good, advancing the Korean government’s “AI for All” with a service base of 20 million users.
- SKT Consortium’s full-stack AI ecosystem is positioned to serve as a national AI infrastructure
SEOUL, South Korea, December 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — SK Telecom (NYSE: SKM) today unveiled “AX K1”, Korea’s first hyperscale artificial intelligence (AI) model with 519 billion (519B) parameters.
AX K1 (519B-A33B) is poised to serve as the foundation for Korea’s ambition to become one of the world’s top three players in the AI race, after the United States and China. The model marks the beginning of a full-stack AI ecosystem, encompassing everything from semiconductors to services.
500B–Evolving to power Korea’s AI ecosystem as a ‘model for teachers’
AX K1, Korea’s first hyperscale AI model, represents an important step in improving the global competitiveness of Korean AI in a landscape currently dominated by the United States and China.
Unlike knowledge-consuming AI models, AX K1 functions as a “teacher model” — a knowledge provider — enabling the transfer of knowledge to smaller models, especially those below scale 70B. It also serves as fundamental digital social capital (SOC) for the AI ecosystem. The SKT consortium will expand research to enable AX K1 to transfer its knowledge to smaller, specialized models, boosting innovation for Korea.
At scales greater than 500 billion parameters, AI models demonstrate more stable performance in complex mathematical reasoning and multilingual understanding, according to global cases. These enhanced features enable advanced tasks such as high-complexity coding and agent-based execution.
Promote AI as a public good, already advancing “AI for All” through services In Active use nationwide
The SKT consortium plans to strengthen AI accessibility nationwide by offering AX K1 through A. (A-DoT), which has more than 10 million subscribers. The consortium aims to create an “AI for All” framework, allowing the public to easily access AI through phone calls, text messages, web and apps.
Liner, a member of the SKT consortium, operates expert knowledge search services for more than 11 million subscribers worldwide. Expectations are high for providing highly accurate and reliable search services in multiple languages with AX K1.
AX K1 is also expected to boost industrial competitiveness through AIX, including solutions such as A. Biz for manufacturing, real-time character dialogue and autonomous behavior in Krafton’s games, and AI humanoid robots.
Additionally, AX K1 will serve as a test bed to validate the competitiveness of the Korean semiconductor industry. An AI model capable of operating at non-standard workload scale (500B or higher) is essential to practically verify memory bandwidth and inter-GPU communication speed, which are key performance bottlenecks in high-performance AI semiconductors.
Building Full-Stack AI to Advance Korea’s Third Global AI Strategy
The SKT consortium’s business strategy, including SK Telecom’s 500B-scale AI model, aligns with Korea’s national goal of becoming one of the world’s top three countries in AI.
In this global race, success depends not only on the performance of individual models, but also on a country’s ability to scale and exploit AI domestically.
The SKT consortium led by SK Telecom includes eight organizations: SK Telecom, Krafton, 42dot, Rebellions, Liner, SelectStar, Seoul National University and KAIST. Together, they have built a comprehensive sovereign AI platform based entirely on proprietary technologies across the entire value chain, including AI semiconductors, AI data centers (AIDCs), AI models and AI services.
Building on LLM development efforts since 2018, each consortium member contributed specialized expertise: Liner improved accuracy with expert-level information retrieval technology; SelectStar ensured reliability through large-scale data construction and validation; Krafton provided scalability from global multi-modal R&D experience; 42dot has enhanced its versatility with its on-device AI technology; and Rebellions have improved their efficiency with domestically developed NPU technology.
Already, more than 20 institutions, including major affiliates such as SK hynix, SK Innovation, SK Broadband, the Chey Institute for Advanced Studies and the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies, have submitted letters of intent to participate. These institutions agreed to use and validate AX K1 together in real-world contexts.
The consortium plans to release AX K1 as open source for companies in the Korean AI ecosystem. Through leading developer communities and SK Telecom platforms, the consortium will provide open source access and APIs to foster an enabling environment for the transparent development of AI agents.
Additionally, the consortium will establish an integrated support framework for AI model development and disclose parts of the training data used for model development through public and private platforms, thereby strengthening Korea’s overall AI competitiveness.
“This marks a new inflection point in Korea’s journey to becoming one of the world’s top three countries in AI amid intensifying global competition,” said Kim Tae-yoon, head of the Foundation Model Office at SK Telecom. “As Korea’s AI leader, we will continue our efforts to bring AI to everyone. »
About SK Telecom
SK Telecom has been leading the growth of the mobile industry since 1984. Today, the company is taking customer experience to new heights by going beyond connectivity. By placing AI at the heart of its business, SK Telecom is quickly transforming into an AI company with a strong global presence. He focuses on driving innovations in AI infrastructure, AI transformation (AIX), and AI services to deliver greater value to industry, society, and life.
For more information, please visit our LinkedIn page www.linkedin.com/company/sk-telecom.
Show original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/sk-telecom-unveils-ax-k1-koreas-first-500b-scale-hyperscale-ai-model-302649836.html
SOURCE SK Telecom
