KT to Launch 'Korean-Style AI Semiconductor' in Global Market Next Year

Jang Won Mo-re, CEO (third from left), Kim Chae-hee, Head of KT Strategy Office (fourth from left), and Park Sung-hyun, CEO of Rebellion (second from right), are taking a commemorative photo. Photo by KT

[Asia Economy Reporter Oh Su-yeon] ‘Korean-style AI Full Stack’ led by KT will make its full-scale entry into the global stage next year.

On the 22nd, KT announced that it held an ‘AI Semiconductor Business Cooperation Committee Workshop’ at the KT East Building located in Jongno-gu, Seoul, with major companies representing the AI semiconductor ecosystem such as KT Cloud, Rebellion, and More, to discuss plans to make 2023 the inaugural year for building the Korean-style AI Full Stack.

Key executives from each company attended the event, including Kim Chae-hee, KT Chief Strategy Officer (Executive Vice President), Nam Chung-beom, Head of KT Cloud Cloud Division (Senior Vice President), Cho Kang-won, CEO of More, Yoon Do-yeon, CEO of More, and Park Sung-hyun, CEO of Rebellion.

The companies participating in this workshop selected global expansion as the key agenda for next year. Their strategy is to pioneer overseas markets through joint sales of AI services and AI semiconductor hardware and software, spreading Korean-style AI semiconductors to the global market, and transferring KT’s AI Full Stack building know-how to telecommunications operators worldwide. Telecommunications operators in Southeast Asia, who own data centers, have shown great interest in the AI Full Stack, making them the primary cooperation targets.

The AI Full Stack refers to products and services encompassing the entire process from infrastructure such as AI semiconductors, which form the foundation of AI business, to AI application services provided to customers. Companies with an AI Full Stack environment are rare even in the global market.

Preparations for execution are also progressing smoothly. Rebellion, responsible for AI semiconductor hardware design, plans to unveil the country’s only server AI semiconductor supporting language models in March next year. Generally, AI semiconductors supporting language models are known to be more difficult to develop than those supporting vision models, and in terms of performance, they offer more than three times the energy efficiency and lower introduction costs compared to existing GPUs.

Rebellion’s AI semiconductor will be installed in KT data centers combined with More’s infrastructure optimization solutions and is expected to be applied to various KT AI services based on ultra-large AI models, such as AI contact centers.

KT has made significant efforts over the past year to complete the AI Full Stack business. It made a strategic investment of 30 billion KRW in Rebellion, an AI semiconductor fabless startup, to strengthen AI semiconductor hardware design, and invested in More, an AI infrastructure solution specialist company, to advance KT AI infrastructure performance. In April, KT spun off KT Cloud to further enhance the expertise of its core AI capabilities in data centers and cloud business.

The ‘AI Semiconductor Business Cooperation Committee,’ formed in October last year, played a central role. Until December this year, it held a total of 15 intense strategy meetings to establish a foundation for growth, selecting and executing immediate tasks in AI infrastructure, AI services, AI models, and next-generation AI business fields.

Through this, KT launched the world’s first pay-as-you-go GPU service, Hyperscale AI Computing (HAC), and contributed to the commercialization of the ultra-large AI model ‘MIDEUM.’ HAC is a service that allows customers requiring large-scale computation to allocate GPU resources as much as they want through multi and dynamic allocation technology and return them immediately after computation. ‘MIDEUM’ focused on developing functions that reduce AI training time in specific industrial sectors through model compression techniques, enabling immediate application of ultra-large AI models to industries, and can simultaneously generate, interpret, and understand sentences in natural language processing. KT also secured numerous customers for the government’s ultra-large AI project in the second half of the year, contributing to its success.

In the AI semiconductor ecosystem, the committee led by KT is evaluated to have established a positive cooperative relationship that rapidly advances business by maximizing synergy among players in each area.

Kim Chae-hee, KT Chief Strategy Officer (Executive Vice President), said, “It was a meaningful occasion to review the cooperative relationships steadily built toward a single goal and to devise common goals and execution plans for the global expansion of the AI Full Stack,” adding, “We will do our best to enable AI semiconductor partners to thrive in the global AI market.”

Park Sung-hyun, CEO of Rebellion, said, “Through the committee, we were able to promptly complement KT’s ultra-large model services and Rebellion’s development roadmap and prepare the AI Full Stack,” and added, “Next year, we will create tangible results to lay the foundation for the global expansion of the AI Full Stack.”

Cho Kang-won, CEO of More, said, “More is developing world-class AI infrastructure software through close cooperation with KT and is producing tangible results in both cloud and ultra-large model development,” and added, “We look forward to continuously developing partnerships and creating various business opportunities in the future.”