Unlocking Defense Innovation: SK Telecom’s Groundbreaking AI Collaboration with the Government

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SK Telecom has partnered with South Korea’s Defense Ministry and the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) to drive a defense AI transformation program called AX. This is the first effort to apply MSIT’s homegrown AI foundation model project to the defense sector. Government, industry and the military plan to cooperate to broaden the national AI ecosystem and strengthen South Korea’s AI competitiveness.

On May 14 at SKT Tower in Seoul’s Euljiro district, SKT and the Defense Ministry signed a memorandum of understanding to promote defense AX by applying MSIT’s homegrown AI foundation model in defense applications.

Under the MOU, SKT and the Defense Ministry will collaborate on developing and testing defense-specific AI models based on the homegrown foundation model, collecting and sharing open defense data for use, and supporting GPU access tied to national AI projects, among other areas.

The agreement is a follow-up to MSIT’s homegrown AI foundation model project and aims to accelerate the digital transformation of the defense sector. It marks the first time the foundation model will be used for defense. In January, SKT’s elite team advanced to phase two of the homegrown foundation model project with A.X K1, an ultra-large AI model that surpassed 519 billion parameters—the first domestic model to exceed 500 billion parameters.

SKT will lead development of defense-focused AI models using its large language model (LLM) expertise and GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) infrastructure. To operate large models more efficiently, SKT plans to apply model-lightweighting techniques to A.X K1 and K2 and then further train them on defense data to optimize performance for defense environments.

The company stressed the importance of this partnership given defense’s stringent security and data-sovereignty requirements, calling it a first step toward adopting “sovereign AI” to support defense autonomy. SKT plans to deliver a lightweight variant of the A.X K1 model to the Defense Ministry that reduces model size while improving processing speed.

The Defense Ministry will provide SKT with GPU resources secured through MSIT’s national AI project in the second quarter. SKT will use those resources to develop and demonstrate high-performance AI models and to strengthen a collaborative framework based on national R&D infrastructure.

Jeon Jun-beom, director of the Defense AI Planning Bureau at the Defense Ministry, said, “This agreement will let us rapidly develop and demonstrate defense-specific AI models based on the homegrown foundation model, giving defense AX a meaningful boost. We will continue expanding collaboration with private firms like SKT to effectively introduce AI across the defense sector.”

Choi Dong-won, director of AI Infrastructure Policy at MSIT, said, “This collaboration will be an important milestone for the practical use of our homegrown AI technology in defense. By combining private-sector technical strengths with government GPU infrastructure, we will actively support defense AI transformation and create a virtuous cycle that revitalizes the domestic AI ecosystem.”

Kim Myung-guk, head of SKT’s Industrial AI Division, said, “Leveraging SKT’s integrated capabilities across AI, data centers and telecommunications, we will make a meaningful contribution to strengthening Korea’s defense competitiveness. We also plan to expand AI applications in sectors where data sovereignty and security are critical—such as finance, manufacturing, healthcare and public services—to enhance K-AI competitiveness.”

Junyoung Park pjy60@viva100.com