Telecoms see AI businesses gain traction in Q2

SK Telecom reported a 92.5% year-on-year surge in its AI data center (AIDC) business to 136.2 billion won in Q2, driving overall revenue up 0.5% to 4.3591 trillion won ($3.08 billion) and operating profit up 67.3% to 566 billion won. The company, which established SK Hyper to oversee AIDC development, plans to invest 750 billion won through 2030 to build 5 gigawatts of capacity.

Major telecom operators are seeing early results from their push into artificial intelligence AI , with AI data centers AIDC , cloud and AI transformation businesses posting growth in the second quarter even as traditional telecom operations remained largely stagnant. SK Telecom reported the sharpest growth in its AI infrastructure business. Its second-quarter revenue rose 0.5 percent year-on-year to 4.3591 trillion won $3.08 billion , while operating profit jumped 67.3 percent to 566 billion won. The profit increase was partly due to the absence of one-off costs from last year’s hacking incident. Despite the company’s marginal growth in overall revenue, its AIDC business surged 92.5 percent year-on-year to 136.2 billion won this quarter. It attributed the growth to expanded data center operations and rising demand for high-performance computing infrastructure as generative AI adoption accelerates. The company established a new company, SK Hyper, late last month to oversee AIDC business development and plans to invest 750 billion won through 2030. It aims to build out 5 gigawatts