SK Telecom and South Korea MND sign defence AI model deal

TL;DR: SK Telecom and South Korea’s Ministry of National Defence agreed to develop and test sovereign AI models for military use in 2026. The project will use SK Telecom’s large language model capabilities, GPU-as-a-Service infrastructure, publicly available defence data, and GPU resources from the Ministry of Science and ICT’s National AI Project. The agreement is the first defence deployment under South Korea’s Sovereign AI Foundation Model Project.

SK Telecom signed an agreement with South Korea’s Ministry of National Defence in 2026 to develop sovereign AI models for military administration and operations. The companies said they will jointly develop and test the models for defence use in South Korea.

The project will use SK Telecom’s large language model, or LLM, capabilities and its GPU-as-a-Service infrastructure. SK Telecom said it will use publicly available defence data and GPU resources provided through the Ministry of Science and ICT’s National AI Project to develop and pilot the AI models.

SK Telecom also plans to adapt its existing A.X family of AI models for the Ministry of National Defence by training them further on defence-related data and applying model lightweighting to reduce size and speed up processing. The agreement is the first defence deployment linked to the Ministry of Science and ICT’s Sovereign AI Foundation Model Project, a national programme intended to support domestic AI capabilities and reduce reliance on overseas technology.

Related questions

• What did SK Telecom and South Korea’s Ministry of National Defence agree to develop?
• Which South Korean government project is this defence AI deployment linked to?
• What SK Telecom AI assets will be used in the military AI project?