SK Telecom’s AI data center revenue jumps 89%

SK Telecom, a South Korean telecom carrier, said on May 7 its first quarter 2026 revenue was 4.4 trillion won (US$2.99 billion), as wireless sales recovered from the previous quarter and AI data center revenue rose.

Compared with a year earlier, revenue fell 1.4%, operating income dropped 5.3%, and net income declined 12.5%.

Handset subscribers increased by 210,000 and mobile service revenue rose 1.7% from the previous quarter.

Its AI data center business posted 131.4 billion won (US$89.4 million) in revenue, up 89.3% year on year, which the company linked to higher data center utilization and more GPU-as-a-service sales.

🔗 Source: SK Telecom

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

SK Telecom’s earnings get help from its move toward a full-stack AI business

AI data center revenue rose 89.3%, matching SK Telecom’s broader “AI Native” plan presented at MWC26, the Mobile World Congress 2026 telecom industry event 1.
The plan calls for 1-gigawatt-class hyperscale AI data center (AIDC) capacity across South Korea. SK Telecom also said it plans an AIDC in the country’s southwest with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT 1.
SK Telecom wants its sovereign AI foundation model, an AI model built for domestic control and use, to exceed 1 trillion parameters 1.
The Global Telco AI Alliance (GTAA) backs this effort through work with Deutsche Telekom, e&, Singtel, and SoftBank on telecom-specific AI models built from pooled data. GTAA members serve 1.3 billion subscribers across 50 countries, SK Telecom said 2.

A path for telecom carriers looking past basic connectivity

SK Telecom is trying to earn more than network fees by building and selling the AI infrastructure that runs on telecom networks.
Its stack includes the “Haein” Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) cluster plus “Petasus AI Cloud” virtualization software. SK Telecom said it plans to sell Petasus AI Cloud in global markets 1.
SK Group plans to explore an AI data center in Vietnam’s Nghe An region linked to a liquefied natural gas (LNG) power project, using SK Group’s energy capabilities. SK Telecom and SK Innovation signed memorandums of understanding (MOUs), or preliminary business agreements, with local partners 3.
SK Telecom also won International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) approval for its AI data center interconnection architecture as an international standard. That gives the company a role in shaping how AI data centers operate 4.