SKT invests $100 million in Anthropic

SK Telecom (SKT), South Korea’s largest telco company, said it will invest $100 million in AI company Anthropic .

Founded in 2021, Anthropic was co-founded by folks who have left OpenAI . The startup has already raised over $1.4 billion from several investors including Google, SAP, Menlo Ventures, NLS Ventures, Raison, Salesforce Ventures, Sound Ventures, Spark Capital, SV Angel, and Zoom Ventures.

With this move, SKT is diving head-first into the dynamic world of generative AI. They’re partnering with Anthropic to develop a large language model that caters to global telecom companies.

Anthropic has an AI system called Claude that is similar to OpenAI’s Chat GPT. Claude can automate workflows, generate code, and assist with research through natural conversation.

As background, running ChatGPT costs about $700,000 daily. Despite efforts to monetize newer versions, OpenAI isn’t close to breaking even.