SK Telecom to unveil hyperscale AI language model

An infographic of A.X K1 artificial intelligence model's functions / Courtesy of SK Telecom

SK Telecom will unveil a hyperscale artificial intelligence (AI) model with more than 500 billion parameters at a presentation for the government-led national AI foundation model project on Tuesday.

The company said Sunday the SK Telecom consortium, comprising eight organizations including the telecom operator, Krafton, Rebellions, Seoul National University and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, has developed A.X K1, which will be Korea’s first AI language model with a total of 519 billion parameters.

Parameters are learned values that a model uses to analyze data and widely regarded as an indicator of the model’s scale or size.

During inference, A.X K1 activates about 33 billion parameters, allowing it to maintain high performance while optimizing computational efficiency. This design enables the model to operate flexibly from heavy-duty training to lightweight task execution.

“Developing Korea’s first 500-billion-parameter scale model marks a new turning point for the country’s ambition to join the global top tier of AI leaders amid fierce international competition,” said Kim Tae-yoon, SK Telecom’s head of foundation model division. “As Korea’s national AI champion, we’ll continue working to realize our vision of AI for everyone.”

Given the benchmarks for global models with over 500 billion parameters, SK Telecom said A.X K1 will be able to offer more stable performance in complex reasoning, math and multilingual understanding than smaller-scale models, while enhancing advanced use cases such as code generation and autonomous agent-based workflows.

At such a scale, A.X K1 can also serve as a “teacher model,” transferring knowledge to smaller and domain-specific models, which will make it a core element of the AI ecosystem.

SK Telecom’s consortium plans to extend research so A.X K1 can train smaller models that directly enhance daily life and drive industrial innovation across Korea.

Unlike many AI models that are primarily trained in English, A.X K1 was designed from the beginning to be trained in Korean, enabling it to understand Korean-language input naturally. This Korean-first approach makes the model particularly well suited to building personalized services that reflect the country’s culture, economy and history.

To expand accessibility, the company plans to deploy A.X K1 through its AI service A. (Adot), which has over 10 million subscribers, creating an environment for people to access AI easily through calls, text messages, the web and mobile apps.

SK Telecom plans to expand the model’s applications across various sectors, including Adot Biz for workplace productivity, AI solutions that optimize manufacturing processes, Krafton’s game AI for real-time character dialogue and autonomous behavior, and humanoid robotics technologies that extend AI models into physical and behavioral domains.

A.X K1 is also expected to serve as a testbed for the semiconductor industry. As performance testing in AI chip development requires massive volume and high speed in transferring data, its scale is highly effective for verifying next-generation AI semiconductor performance.

SK Telecom plans to open-source A.X K1 along with an application programming interface, providing local firms with an environment for developing AI agents.