South Korea-based SK Telecom (SKT) unveiled an upgraded GPU-as-a-service cluster powered by more than 1,000 Nvidia B200 GPUs, with the facility to support the Ministry of Science and ICT’s (MSIT) programme to develop national AI foundation models.

In a statement, SKT claimed the platform, installed at SK Broadband’s Gasan AI data centre, is one of country’s largest GPU clusters. Penguin Solutions provided the intelligent management software, while Supermicro supplied the AI servers.

Kim Myoung-Gook, head of SKT’s GPUaaS Business Office, stated as an AI infrastructure provider, “we are committed to building the nation’s AI superhighway”.

The operator explained using its in-house virtualisation offering, Petasus AI Cloud, SKT can quickly partition and reconfigure the GPU cluster according to customer needs to maximise utilisation.

Its first GPUaaS launched in late 2024 used Nvidia H100 GPUs.

The operator revealed its research group secured a leading position in the MSIT’s Proprietary AI Foundation Model project, which is working to develop next-generation large-scale AI models.

SKT is the largest mobile player in South Korea, with 23.8 million mobile connections at the end of June, data from GSMA Intelligence showed.