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Following early AI investment, in 2021 SK Telecom announced its intention to become an AI company for the AI era. What actions has SK Telecom undertaken to this end? What role is AI playing across its business? And is AI paying off?
Introduction
This report follows SK Telecom’s endeavours to become an AI company. As a telco, it has been among the most vocal about its AI ambitions and has shown the most progress in terms of AI services and solutions. There were 57 entries associated with SK Telecom (SKT) in the latest version of STL Partners’ Telco generative AI adoption tracker (published in December 2025).
The report provides a detailed chronological account of AI developments at the telco, looking back at where it started in AI, through its changing strategic positioning from 2021 to 2025, the impact of the cyber breach (April 2025), to where SKT stands on AI now.
SKT’s AI path has been far from linear. It is also unique to SKT – and not one that other telcos could easily emulate due to:
- SKT’s position within the conglomerate SK Group
- South Korea’s national AI ambitions
- SKT’s long-held appetite for innovation
However, there are learnings to be had for telcos considering their own AI journeys, whether that be from a network and organisation transformation perspective, or from an AI services perspective.
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Table of contents
- Executive Summary
- Recommendations
- How SK Telecom progressed
- Is SK Telecom an AI company yet?
- Introduction
- Early days of SK Telecom AI
- AI coming into focus
- International aspirations
- AI front and centre
- AI scale-up efforts
- Growth in AI investment
- Focus turns to monetisation
- Aligning the organisation for AI growth
- Cyberattack destabilises telco core
- Separating AI and telco business
- What’s next?
- Has SK Telecom transitioned to become an AI company?
Related research
- Lightstorm’s SmartNet and Polarin – NaaS case study
- Telco generative AI adoption tracker
- Silicon: Where should operators place their bets?
- From reactive networks to AI-driven automation: A new path to network autonomy
- Futureproofing datacentre interconnect: The backbone of an AI strategy
