SK Telecom partners with defense ministry on military AI

SK Telecom, a South Korean telecom company, signed an MOU with the Defense Ministry in Seoul on May 14 to build and test a defense AI model based on its A.X K1 model under the national AI foundation project.

The deal also covers use of open defense data and support for SK Telecom’s GPU access, with the ministry set to provide GPU resources in the second quarter through another national AI project.

The partnership is the first defense use case in the government program.

Other consortiums led by LG AI Research, Upstage, and Motif Technologies also passed the first review and face a final evaluation in August.

🔗 Source: The Korea Times

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

A national AI race is taking shape in South Korea

South Korea’s “Sovereign AI Foundation Model” project seeks homegrown AI built from the ground up to support the country’s digital independence 1.
SK Telecom’s group moved on. Naver Cloud, the cloud unit of Naver, fell out after round one when it missed originality standards 2. NC AI, the AI unit of NCSoft, also dropped out on the same grounds 2.
SK Telecom’s A.X K1 has 519 billion parameters. It shared first place in a government test covering math, safety, and reliability 3.
GPU support from the Defense Ministry matters because SK Telecom is a designated GPU supplier for the project, so it cannot receive the main state GPU allotment from the second half of 2025 to the first half of 2026 1.

The model also aims for real-world use

SK Telecom plans to push A.X K1 past administrative work. The company wants an omni-modal model with image and voice capabilities 4.
SK Telecom says the technology can help protect data sovereignty. It also says omni-modal systems could grow into AI that works with the physical world 4.
The market for physical AI foundation models is expected to rise from US$4.8 billion in 2025 to US$76.2 billion by 2034, helped by industrial robots and autonomous vehicles 5.
The consortium also includes 42dot, a mobility technology company 3. Krafton, a gaming company, is also part of the group 3. That gives SK Telecom a defense setting to test work underway with those partners 3.