Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2015 (Image courtesy of Yonhap)
SEOUL, March 10 (Korea Bizwire) — At Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2025, LG Uplus announced a partnership with Google’s Gemini AI, marking the final piece of South Korea’s major telecom companies unveiling their strategic AI alliances.
With this move, SK Telecom has aligned with Anthropic and Perplexity, KT has partnered with Microsoft, and LG Uplus has chosen Google as its AI business partner. While these collaborations highlight the increasing reliance on advanced foreign AI models, they do not signal the abandonment of domestic AI development.
Each of the telecom firms continues to develop its own AI models: SK Telecom’s A.Dot-X, KT’s Midium, and LG Uplus’s Xigen, built on LG AI Research’s Exaone. These companies are pursuing a multi-LLM (Large Language Model) strategy, integrating both proprietary and external AI models to enhance their services.
AI Wrapper Strategy Gains Momentum
Industry experts note that South Korea’s telecom firms are increasingly adopting an AI wrapper strategy, a model where companies take foundational AI models—such as OpenAI’s GPT, Google’s Gemini, and Meta’s LLaMA—and develop customized applications on top of them.
Since OpenAI’s ChatGPT disrupted the market in late 2022, startups and IT companies worldwide have rushed to develop AI-powered services leveraging these foundational models. While some struggled to gain traction, others, like AI coding assistant Cursor, have successfully carved out sustainable user bases.
Cursor, for instance, integrates ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 to assist developers by tailoring coding suggestions to individual styles, reaching an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $4 million by October 2024.
Other AI wrapper companies, such as Ruitten Technologies—which surpassed 5 million monthly active users last year—and AI search service Liner, whose premium subscriber base consists largely of students and professionals, also demonstrate strong market potential.
KT Leads the AI Race Among Telecom Firms
Among South Korea’s telecom firms, KT has taken the most aggressive approach in integrating AI. KT CEO Kim Young-seop, speaking at MWC 2025, emphasized the urgency of rapid adaptation: “We must learn quickly and catch up fast to elevate our capabilities. What matters is how well our industry and consumers utilize AI.”
Industry observers note that as major tech firms’ AI models become increasingly similar in performance, the key challenge lies in how effectively companies can integrate these technologies into practical services.
Balancing AI Wrapper Strategy with Sovereign AI Development
Despite the rise of AI wrapper strategies, experts stress the importance of advancing domestic AI models under a “sovereign AI” policy, ensuring that South Korea remains competitive in AI research and development.
The emergence of DeepSeek’s R1 model has intensified competition in inference AI models—systems capable of human-like reasoning. This has accelerated efforts within South Korea’s AI industry to develop homegrown inference AI models that can rival those of global tech giants.
Alongside the telecom firms, domestic AI powerhouses such as Naver, LG AI Research, and Upstage are prioritizing AI model innovation in response to the fast-evolving landscape, aiming to secure a foothold in the next generation of AI technology.
As the AI market matures, South Korea’s telecom giants face a pivotal moment: balancing strategic partnerships with global AI leaders while strengthening their domestic AI capabilities to maintain long-term competitiveness in the field.
Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)
