LG Uplus to invest over $145 mn in AI sector: CEO

[Photo provided by LG Uplus Corp.]

South Korean mobile carrier LG Uplus Corp. plans to invest more than 200 billion won ($145 million) in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector within 2024, increasing the ration by 30 to 40 percent from the previous year, according to its chief executive officer on Tuesday.

“We are always open to investment opportunities if we meet good companies or collaboration opportunities,” LG Uplus CEO Hwang Hyeon-sik said.

Hwang shared the company’s investment plans in the AI field during a meeting with Korean reporters at LG Technology Ventures in Silicon Valley, the United States, on Tuesday.

LG Uplus is expected to actively engage in AI investments as it sets AI as a strategic direction in 2024. The mobile carrier also plans to revise its brand slogan with the keyword AI Transformation (AX).

The main reason for Hwang’s visit to Silicon Valley was to attract AI talent, with LG Uplus aiming to more than double the number of AI developers, including new hires, by the end of 2024.

“The (related workforce) will double quickly,” Hwang said. “We are fostering internal talent to strengthen AI capabilities not only via our new hires but also by enhancing the AI capabilities of existing developers so that all employees can use AI.”

The CEO met with local big tech companies and AI startups to discuss collaborations during his visit to Silicon Valley. Hwang met with Meta Platforms Inc. for cooperation in the field of large language models (LLM).

“We proactively discussed actively using Meta’s foundational models and developing application services together,” he said, calling it “cooperation based on next-generation LLM models.” Meta is currently providing the open-source LLM called Lama and is expected to release the next model, Lama3, in the first half of 2024.