SK Telecom (SKT) is partnering with leading telecommunications companies in Japan and Taiwan to create a fund that invests in next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
On the 10th, SKT announced during a press conference at NTT’s headquarters in Tokyo that it would jointly establish the ‘ION AI Fund’ (AI Fund) with Japan’s NTT and Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom. The fund is expected to reach a scale of 500 million USD (approximately 760 billion KRW). The three companies have decided to establish a fund management company called ‘Catalyte Capital,’ which will be based in Silicon Valley and East Asia, to manage the fund.
The AI Fund will invest in a broad range of startups focusing on areas such as AI data center infrastructure, including power efficiency optimization and liquid cooling, AI semiconductors like AI accelerators, GPUs, and NPUs, industry-specific AI service applications in fields like medicine, manufacturing, and finance, inference-optimized AI software, and optical communication. While mainly targeting early-stage startups in Silicon Valley, companies in Asia and Europe will also be considered for investment.
An SKT representative explained that stable operation of AI infrastructure and rapid expansion of AI services have become crucial, necessitating collaboration at the national and corporate levels. With the advent of the 6G era, different types of networks such as AI-RAN will be needed, requiring cooperation with regions like Europe and Japan. Additionally, large-scale data centers, like those for AI, need technologies to reduce power consumption and latency. Collaboration in the field of power and space efficiency of data centers is possible through NTT’s optical communication infrastructure, ‘ION’ (the same name as the fund).
The three companies plan to complete the recruitment of the first round of investors soon and officially launch the fund. NTT stated that approximately 20 companies, including Sony and Toshiba, have shown interest in contributing, and SK Hynix is also preparing to participate in the fund. SKT CEO Jung Jae-heon mentioned, “We will expand opportunities for collaboration with AI innovation companies based on SK Group’s competitiveness.”