New KT leadership bolsters AI ambitions with startup investments

KT Corp. Chief Executive Officer, Kim Young-shub, left, talks with Jake Yongjae Lee, the CEO, co-founder at QANDA, at GSMA M360 APAC 2023 held in Seoul, on Sep. 7. [Courtesy of KT]

South Korean telecommunication operator KT Corp. invested in two leading domestic startups specializing in artificial intelligence (AI), making a strategic move under the leadership of new Chief Executive Officer, Kim Young-shub, ahead of the release of its own artificial intelligence service at the end of October.

The telecom company announced on Sunday that it invested a total of 20 billion won (about $15 million) in Korean AI startups Upstage and Qanda to establish strategic partnerships with them, with each company receiving 10 billion won. Upstage is a world-leading open large language model (LLM) leaderboard provider and Qanda is an AI-based learning platform by Mathpresso Inc. that ranks at the top of education application rankings in 20 countries.

KT aims to target the business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) AI markets with these strategic partnerships. With Upstage, KT plans to focus on the development of private LLM solutions for businesses and specialized LLMs for B2B domains. With Qanda, KT seeks to collaborate on B2C services, including the development of specialized LLMs for the education sector and the expansion of AI-driven education platforms.

KT views these investments as the first step towards further AI-related investments. “We aim to create an open AI ecosystem, and to this end, we plan to expand our investments in AI startups,” an unnamed KT official said. Last week, KT also sought collaboration in the field of hyperscale AI with Canada‘s Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence. The Vector Institute is a globally renowned AI research institution, co-founded by computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, a known pioneer in deep learning and a former vice president at Google LLC.

As it aggressively expands collaboration and investment in AI-related fields since Kim’s CEO inauguration, the interest in KT’s upcoming hyperscale AI service set to launch in October is growing. KT has been promoting “AI full stack” services, encompassing integrated services ranging from AI semiconductors to cloud coverage.