SK Telecom has unveiled A.X K1, Korea’s first hyperscale artificial intelligence (AI) model with 519 billion (519B) parameters. A.X K1 (519B-A33B) is intended to serve as the core foundation for Korea’s ambition to become a top-three global player in the AI race, following the US and China.
The model sees the beginning of the country’s full-stack AI ecosystem, encompassing all areas from semiconductors to services. SK Telecom hopes that A.X K1 will boost industrial competitiveness through AIX — including solutions such as A. Biz for manufacturing, real-time character dialogue and autonomous behavior in Krafton’s games, as well as humanoid AI robots.
Additionally, A.X K1 will serve as a testbed to validate the competitiveness of Korea’s semiconductor industry. An AI model capable of operating at a non-standard scale of workload (500B or more) is indispensable for practically verifying memory bandwidth and inter-GPU communication speed, which are key performance bottlenecks in high-performance AI semiconductors.
“This marks a new inflection point in Korea’s journey toward becoming one of the world’s top three AI nations amid intensifying global competition,” said Kim Tae-yoon, Head of Foundation Model Office at SK Telecom. “As Korea’s leading AI company, we will continue driving our efforts to deliver AI for Everyone.”
AI ecosystem as a ‘teacher model’
Unlike knowledge-consuming AI models, A.X K1 functions as a ‘Teacher Model’ — a provider of knowledge — enabling knowledge transfer to smaller models, particularly those below the 70B-scale. It also serves as foundational digital social overhead capital (SOC) for the AI ecosystem. The SKT consortium will expand research to enable A.X K1 to transfer knowledge to smaller and specialised models.
At scales above 500 billion parameters, SKT reports that AI models demonstrate more stable performance in complex mathematical reasoning and multilingual understanding, according to global cases. These enhanced capabilities enable advanced tasks such as high-complexity coding and agent-based execution.
Advancing ‘AI for everyone’
The SKT consortium plans to strengthen nationwide AI accessibility by offering A.X K1 through A. (A-DoT), which has over 10 million subscribers. The consortium aims to build an ‘AI for Everyone’ framework, enabling the public to easily access AI via phone calls, text messages, the web and applications.
Liner, a member of the SKT consortium, operates search services for more than 11 million global subscribers, now aiming to provide highly accurate and reliable search services in multiple languages with A.X K1.
Consortium’s proprietary technologies
The SKT consortium’s business strategy, including SK Telecom’s 500B-scale AI model, aligns with Korea’s national goal of becoming one of the world’s top three AI nations. In this global race, success depends not only in the performance of individual models but also on a nation’s ability to scale and operate AI at a national level.
The SK Telecom-led SKT consortium includes eight organizations: SK Telecom, Krafton, 42dot, Rebellions, Liner, SelectStar, Seoul National University, and KAIST. Together, they have built a full-stack sovereign AI platform based entirely on proprietary technologies across the entire value chain, including AI semiconductors, AI data centers (AIDCs), AI models and AI services.
Building on LLM development efforts since 2018, each consortium member contributed specialised expertise: Liner enhanced accuracy through expert-level information retrieval technology; SelectStar ensured reliability through large-scale data construction and validation; Krafton provided scalability from global multimodal R&D experience; 42dot strengthened versatility through its on-device AI technology; and Rebellions improved efficiency with domestically developed NPU technology.
Already, more than 20 institutions, including major affiliates such as SK hynix, SK Innovation, SK Broadband, the Chey Institute for Advanced Studies and the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies, have submitted letters of intent to participate. These institutions have agreed to utilize and validate A.X K1 together in real-world field settings.
Open-source access
The consortium plans to release A.X K1 as open-source to companies across Korea’s AI ecosystem. Through major developer communities and SK Telecom platforms, the consortium will provide open-source access and APIs to foster an environment for seamless AI agent development.
Additionally, the consortium will establish an integrated support framework for AI model development and disclose portions of the training data used for model development through public and private platforms, boosting Korea’s overall AI competitiveness.
Learn about transmedia opportunities at the Beyond Games Transmedia Summit as part of PG Connects London on January 20th, 2026. Register for your tickets here.
Steve is an award-winning editor and copywriter with more than 20 years’ experience specialising in consumer technology and video games. With a career spanning from the first PlayStation to the latest in VR, he's proud to be a lifelong gamer.
