SK Telecom Teams Up with AI Search Startup Perplexity in South Korea

SK Telecom, South Korea’s leading telco, has formed a partnership with the American AI startup Perplexity, positioning it as an alternative to search engines like Google and Naver.

This collaboration offers SK Telecom’s customers free access to Perplexity’s premium search services, while also allowing the company to develop AI-powered personal assistant apps. The partnership, which may evolve into further financial ties, capitalizes on Perplexity’s AI models.

Perplexity, having recently raised $73.6 million with a valuation of $520 million from investors including NVIDIA and Jeff Bezos, challenges traditional search engines by providing AI-generated answers with sources. The company, attracting significant traffic to its platform, demonstrates SK Telecom’s commitment to adopting frontier AI technologies, following its $100 million investment in AI model maker Anthropic.

“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,” said Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, in an interview.