SKT Invests 15 Billion KRW in Scatter Lab's 'Iruda'... Collaboration on Massive AI

SK Telecom has made a 15 billion KRW equity investment in Scatter Lab, a leading company in AI emotional conversation. Through this investment, Scatter Lab will join the ‘K-AI Alliance,’ and the two companies will jointly develop AI agent services.

On the 24th, SK Telecom announced that it has made a 15 billion KRW equity investment in Scatter Lab, famous for its AI agent ‘Iruda,’ and signed a strategic partnership.

[Photo by SK Telecom]

Scatter Lab is an AI startup that develops relationship-oriented AI agents capable of friendly conversations like humans by utilizing deep learning technology. It owns AI agents such as ‘Iruda’ and ‘Kang Daon.’

SKT invested 15 billion KRW in Scatter Lab in the form of redeemable convertible preferred shares (RCPS) and will hold equity. Along with this, the two companies have formed a strategic partnership to promote cooperation across all fields of large-scale AI, including ▲development of ‘emotional conversational’ AI agents ▲development of large language models (LLM) in knowledge and emotional domains.

SKT and Scatter Lab have agreed to jointly develop an emotional AI agent service with a new persona (an independent personality) within the A. (Aidot) service. They will also collaborate on developing a large language model (LLM) that encompasses both emotional and knowledge domains.

SKT possesses abundant AI capabilities, including know-how in operating the personalized AI agent ‘Aidot’ service, multimodal technology, and long-term memory technology. Scatter Lab has emotional conversational technology that includes human relationships and spatiotemporal context reasoning. SKT expects that by applying Scatter Lab’s emotional conversational technology?characterized by ‘natural conversation,’ ‘emotion-evoking conversation,’ and ‘human-like conversation’ rules?to the Aidot service, it can evolve into a ‘more human than humans’ Aidot that is closer to users and can help alleviate worries and loneliness.

The two companies will also jointly develop a large language model (LLM) that covers both emotional and knowledge domains. Through cooperation with Scatter Lab, SKT plans to develop a new concept of LLM that combines a high level of knowledge domain with an emotional domain that shares and empathizes with emotions like a human, by securing vast amounts of knowledge data and undergoing learning and evaluation processes.

Along with this partnership, Scatter Lab has also joined the ‘K-AI Alliance’ led by SKT. This is a follow-up move after the launch of the ‘K-AI Alliance’ at Mobile World Congress 2023 (MWC23) with leading Korean AI tech companies such as Moloco, Bespin Global, Sapeon, Conan Technology, Sweet, and Phantom AI.

To proactively respond to the rapidly changing global large-scale AI market, SKT plans to continuously strengthen cooperation with small but strong companies like Scatter Lab and actively expand the AI ecosystem and global advancement centered on the ‘K-AI Alliance.’

According to global market research firm Research and Markets, the conversational AI market size is expected to grow from 6.8 billion USD (about 7.8 trillion KRW) in 2021 to 18.4 billion USD (about 22 trillion KRW) in 2026, with a rapid annual growth rate of 21.8%.

Kim Yong-hoon, Chief A. Service Officer (CASO) of SKT A. Promotion Team, said, “SKT is pleased to collaborate with Scatter Lab, which has strong AI emotional conversation know-how,” and added, “We will continue to lead the activation of the AI ecosystem and strengthen global competitiveness based on openness and cooperation centered on the K-AI Alliance.”

Kim Jong-yoon, CEO of Scatter Lab, said, “Through cooperation with SKT, we plan to focus on technological advancement such as large-scale model training for ‘Social AI,’” and added, “We will strive to grow into one of the leading startups in the global AI market.”