SK Telecom partners with AI search startup Perplexity in Korea

SK Telecom

26/02/2024 11:00

By Krystal Hu
       Feb 26 (Reuters) - SK Telecom, South Korea's largest
telco, is partnering with U.S. AI startup Perplexity to offer
the artificial intelligence-based search engine to its users as
an alternative to Google  GOOGL.O  and Naver  035420.KS , the
companies told Reuters.
    The partnership would allow SK Telecom's subscribers to use
the paid version of Perplexity for free, and for SK Telecom
 017670.KS  to access Perplexity's proprietary models to build
personal AI assistant products with access to real-time
information, the companies said.  
    The details about the partnership, including timing of the
rollout of Perplexity Pro version to SKT users, still needs to
be worked out, SKT's investment team said in an interview. 
    The partnership could expand financially as SK Telecom did
not rule out possibilities to invest or form joint ventures with
Perplexity, they added.
    "It's a win-win situation because SK Telecom is giving more
value-add to their subscribers and we are getting access to
their subscribers through their distribution channels,"
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said in an interview.
    A Google search challenger, Perplexity AI uses generative AI
models to answer user inquiries while providing sources of
information. It raised $73.6 million from investors including
Nvidia  NVDA.O  and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos last month. The
round was led by venture capital firm IVP and valued the company
at about $520 million.
    San Francisco, California-based's Perplexity saw its website
and mobile web had 45.6 million visits in December, according to
Similarweb data. It offers a free version as well as paid
version that charges users $20 a month for unlimited searches.
    SK Telecom has been working with Silicon Valley startups to
access frontier technology and explore using generative AI. Last
year, it announced a $100 million investment in U.S. AI model
maker Anthropic to jointly develop a large language model for
the telecom industry.
    

 (Reporting by Krystal Hu in New York; Editing by Stephen
Coates)
 ((Krystal.Hu@thomsonreuters.com;))