SK Telecom, a South Korean telecom operator, said on July 29 that it released A.X K2, a 688-billion-parameter AI foundation model on Hugging Face as it expands into enterprise and public-sector AI applications in Korea.

The company said A.X K2 improves mathematical and scientific reasoning, Korean-language knowledge, and long-context reasoning over A.X K1. It also introduced multimodal vision and audio models.

A.X K1 was a 519-billion-parameter model that SK Telecom used as a teacher model for smaller systems, providing a baseline for A.X K2’s larger size.

SK Telecom said it plans manufacturing trials with steelmaker KG Steel and auto parts manufacturer KONEC, is developing a defense-specific AI model with South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense, and is providing a lightweight A.X K2 version for its A. Biz service and SK hynix’s internal tools.

The rollout comes as South Korea’s AI policy targets 95% public-sector AI adoption by 2030 and calls for AI deployment in national defense, while the country’s AI framework law excludes systems used solely for defense and security from its scope.

🔗 Source: SK Telecom