Newly appointed SK Telecom (SKT) CEO Jung Jai-hun detailed the operator’s updated AI vision, with plans to add new global partners and boost investment in domestic data centres, pledging to help make South Korea the largest AI hub in Asia.

In his keynote at the SK AI Summit, Jung said the company would increase its new AI facility in Ulsan to a capacity of 1GW and target the Asian market.

Following the launch of the Ulsan data centre, he said major global companies have begun to “take notice” of its AI development capabilities. “We will lay the foundation for Korea to leap forward as an AI infrastructure hub in Asia.”

Jung added it will work with global tech giants such as Amazon Web Services and Nvidia to improve its edge AI, AI-RAN and physical AI cloud technologies, and partner with group subsidiaries to enter markets in the region.

Nvidia and SK Group last week issued a joint release outlining plans for SKT to build a facility with more than 2,000 Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell server GPUs in the initial deployment, part of a plan to build a “manufacturing AI cloud”.

Jung, previously chief governance officer, took over from CEO Ryu Young-sang on 30 October, as part of a wider reshuffle at SK Group. The move comes six months after a data breach compromised SIM-related information for SKT’s entire mobile users base.

In Q3 it registered a net loss of KRW167 billion ($117 million) due to a KRW500 billion compensation payment to customers.

Ryu will lead SK Group’s Supex Council’s AI committee. The telecoms group will be split into two divisions: telecoms and AI. CEO of SK Square Han Myung-jin will head the telecoms unit.