Scheduled as Keynote Speaker at 'SK AI Summit'
"Opportunity to Expand Cloud Services in Korea"
"Korea is rapidly advancing in AI innovation. We look forward to accelerating AI progress and innovation through collaboration with SK Telecom."
Steven Balaban, CEO of Lambda, who is delivering the keynote speech at the 'SK AI Summit' held over two days on the 4th and 5th of next month, said this in an interview with SKT Newsroom.
Founded in 2012, Lambda is a GPUaaS company that provides AI cloud services on a subscription basis by sourcing GPUs from NVIDIA. GPUaaS refers to a service where companies rent resources in a virtual environment through the cloud instead of purchasing GPUs directly. Global big tech companies such as Intel and Microsoft are Lambda’s clients, and SKT invested $20 million in Lambda last February.
Based on Lambda’s GPU resources, SKT plans to launch an AI infrastructure business targeting domestic companies starting this December.
CEO Balaban said, "SKT is a telecommunications company that connects people worldwide while understanding how AI works," adding, "Through the partnership with SKT, we have gained the opportunity to expand cloud services in Korea, a hub of technology and AI innovation."
He stated, "Every day, I see interesting new papers and robot demos coming out of KAIST and Seoul National University," and added, "The achievements of such research are based on GPU infrastructure." He also forecasted an increase in GPU demand in the Korean and Asia-Pacific markets.
In January, Yoo Young-sang, CEO of SKT (left), and Steven Balaban, founder and CEO of Lambda, took a commemorative photo after discussing cooperation plans between the two companies at Lambda's headquarters in San Jose. Photo by SKT Newsroom
CEO Balaban predicted that AI will reshape not only industries but also consumers’ lives. He said, "As a software engineer, I personally experience the productivity improvements currently achievable through cutting-edge large language models (LLMs)," and added, "This trend will undoubtedly continue, and the entire industry will be completely transformed." He continued, "The gap between proprietary models and open-source models is narrowing, enabling companies to fully control their data while building powerful AI applications," and noted, "Lambda is also seeing open-source models driving demand for computing infrastructure."
He further explained, "As AI-based systems like ChatGPT and Apple Intelligence become mainstream, changes will occur in all areas including people’s work hours, leisure, scientific advancement, and commerce," and said, "AI is playing a role in augmenting decision-making across fields, and even the core logic of software is disappearing and being replaced by AI."
CEO Balaban is scheduled to deliver the keynote speech at the 'SK AI Summit,' covering topics such as what the frequent release of high-quality open-source models means for companies and how inference models are impacting computing usage and model performance improvements.
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
