• The parent of SK Telecom and SK Hynix is cementing its role in the global AI sector
• It has struck major collaboration and supply deals with the likes of Nvidia, Microsoft, Anthropic and AWS
• The deals cement SK Group’s role as one of the global AI sector’s most influential companies

South Korean conglomerate SK Group, the parent company of telco and AI infrastructure company SK Telecom and memory chip giant SK Hynix, has solidified its position as a mover and shaker in the global AI sector by striking a series of deals with some of the biggest names in the US tech sector at an AI summit in San Francisco that was hosted by South Korea’s President Lee Jae-myung. 

SK Group, which recently unveiled a long-term AI investment plan worth $642bn, has expanded and solidified its long-time relationship with Nvidia with an agreement that includes the development of AI factory infrastructure by SK Telecom and the provision of memory chips by SK Hynix, the world’s second-largest supplier of such vital components, to Nvidia. The partners value the new agreement at a headline-catching $500bn.

Specifically, Nvidia noted in this announcement that SK Hynix is “entering into a long-term AI memory partnership with Nvidia. As a follow-up measure to solidify their previous long-term technical partnership, this agreement allows Nvidia to secure a stable supply of next-generation AI memory, while enabling SK Hynix to expand the foundation for growth. The two companies will codevelop and optimise next-generation AI memory solutions, including HBM [high bandwidth memory], to meet evolving infrastructure demands ranging from large language model training to agentic AI and physical AI.”

In terms of AI factory development, SK Telecom has already unveiled its AI infrastructure development plans, based on Nvidia technology, and shared its AI factory strategy with TelecomTV for our recent free-to-download 33-page report, Trends in Telco AI Infrastructure.   

Now the partners “aim to accelerate large-scale AI infrastructure development, including sovereign, physical, agentic and enterprise AI services, and jointly address the increasing AI demand across the Asia-Pacific region, including South Korea… The partnership enables SK Telecom to invest in and expand large-scale AI infrastructure while making capital-intensive AI infrastructure available to a broader range of customers.”

SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won stated: “Competitiveness in the AI ​​era depends not on how well AI is utilised but on how much intelligence is generated. Based on SK Telecom’s AI infrastructure capabilities and SK Hynix’s AI memory, SK will build a world-class AI factory in partnership with Nvidia to contribute to Korea’s leap from being a nation that consumes AI to a global hub that creates AI innovation.”

Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, added: “Korea possesses all the conditions to leap forward as a global AI powerhouse, including world-class networks and datacentres, semiconductor technology leadership, and a vast industrial base. Together with SK Telecom and SK Hynix, Nvidia will build a new generation of AI factories that will drive Korea’s next growth.”
 

Multiple big tech bonds

In addition, SK Telecom has expanded its AI datacentre cooperation agreements with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Anthropic, in which the South Korean operator is an investor. 

The telco and Anthropic “signed a comprehensive memorandum of understanding (MOU) for cooperation in building a gigawatt-scale AI datacentre in Korea. Anthropic plans to participate in the AI ​​datacentre construction project currently being pursued by SK Telecom in Korea and will discuss specific cooperation plans,” noted SK Group. 

With AWS, SK Telecom is expanding the scope of their cooperation beyond the joint construction of the AI factory in Ulsan, which is already underway. “The two companies plan to combine SK Telecom’s capabilities in building and operating domestic AI datacentres with AWS’s global cloud and AI technologies and customer base to expand their business to key domestic hubs and, in the long term, secure gigabyte-level AI computing capacity,” stated SK Group. 

In addition, SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won also held long-term cooperation discussions with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. “SK and OpenAI have been continuously discussing cooperation measures for building AI infrastructure, including in the memory sector, and have been steadily strengthening their strategic partnership since signing a partnership agreement last October regarding memory supply and the establishment and operation of the south-west AI datacentre,” the South Korean conglomerate added. 

And Nvidia isn’t the only company to secure a memory chip supply deal, as SK Hynix also agreed a “long-term memory supply collaboration with Microsoft” that will result in the supply of high-performance chips “optimised for AI workloads to Microsoft’s datacentres over the mid-to-long term to respond to the surging demand for AI services,” noted SK Group in this announcement (in Korean).

In addition, the partners “plan to jointly identify memory solutions tailored to AI workload requirements and establish new standards for AI server memory through verification in actual server environments.”

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV