SK Telecom Invests $100 Million in AI Startup Anthropic

SK Telecom, South Korea's largest telco, announced a $100 million investment in Anthropic, a U.S. artificial intelligence firm, to strengthen its telecommunications-driven AI business.

Anthropic, a startup competing with OpenAI in developing AI foundation models, is one of the most well-funded AI firms, having raised $450 million in May from investors, including Alphabet Inc's Google and Spark Capital.

SK Telecom, which also made a smaller investment in May, announced on Sunday that the two companies intend to collaborate on the development of a global telecommunications-oriented multilingual large language model as well as the development of an AI platform.

SK Telecom refused to reveal the amount of its May investment or its stake in Anthropic.

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI executives. Its Claude models are regarded as major rivals to OpenAI's GPT-4.

SK Telecom announced an alliance with Deutsche Telekom, e&, and Singapore Telecommunications to develop telecommunications-driven AI businesses in July.