Google-backed Anthropic raises $100 mln from South Korea's SK Telecom

SK Telecom

14/08/2023 03:43

SEOUL, Aug 14 (Reuters) - South Korea's largest telco SK
Telecom  017670.KS  said it will invest $100 million in U.S.
artificial intelligence firm Anthropic to strengthen its
telecommunications-driven AI business.
    Anthropic, a startup competing with OpenAI in building AI
foundation models, is among the most well-funded AI firms,
having raised $450 million from investors including Alphabet
Inc's  GOOGL.O  Google and Spark Capital in May.
    SK Telecom, which also made a smaller investment in May,
said on Sunday that the two companies plan to jointly develop a
global telecommunications-oriented multilingual large language
model and build an AI platform.
    SK Telecom declined to reveal the size of its May investment
or the size of its stake in Anthropic.
    Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI executives in 2021.
Its Claude models are seen as major competitors to OpenAI's
GPT-4.
    In July, SK Telecom agreed with Deutsche Telekom, e& and
Singapore Telecommunications to form an alliance to jointly
develop telecommunications-driven AI businesses.
    

 (Reporting by Joyce Lee. Editing by Sam Holmes)
 ((joyce.lee@tr.com;))