Sk Telecom’s Ai Unit Offers Staff Voluntary Retirement Program Just Weeks After Launch

South Korean telco elephantine SK Telecom is making large changes astatine its caller AI division, AI CIC, conscionable weeks aft it was launched. Staff employed by nan portion are being offered a voluntary status programme arsenic portion of a broader effort to bring together nan company’s various AI-related divisions, SK Telecom confirmed to TechCrunch.

“In precocious September, SK Telecom announced nan motorboat of nan AI CIC (Company-in-Company) portion and confirmed that elaborate organizational restructuring would beryllium specified by nan extremity of October,” a spokesperson astatine SK Telecom told TechCrunch. “This typical status programme is wholly a supportive measurement and is not intended arsenic a restructuring aliases downsizing measure.”

The voluntary status programme will not impact forced layoffs, and is meant to support labor whose roles, organizations aliases activity locations whitethorn change, nan spokesperson said. Employees who opt to enactment pinch nan institution whitethorn beryllium reassigned to location offices.

Details of nan voluntary status programme person been communicated to unit crossed each acquisition levels, including some inferior and elder employees, manufacture sources told TechCrunch. The AI portion has astir 1,000 employees, per media reports.

AI CIC is meant to bring together SK Telecom’s various AI-related units nether a centralized organization, per nan spokesperson. “This integration involves streamlining overlapping roles and functions, which whitethorn inevitably lead to changes specified arsenic domiciled transitions, organizational realignments, aliases relocations,” they said.

The caller section will oversee nan improvement of SK Telecom’s individual AI agent, A. (pronounced “A-dot”), its AI information halfway operations, endeavor AI business, arsenic good arsenic world AI partnerships and investments.

Severance packages are reportedly expected to alteration based connected employees’ tenure and position, but nan spokesperson told TechCrunch nan institution has group nary specified soul targets. “As information is wholly voluntary, it is difficult astatine this shape to foretell [how galore employees] it whitethorn effect connected nan statement arsenic a whole,” nan spokesperson said.

The restructuring comes arsenic SK Telecom seeks to streamline operations and boost efficiency, pinch a circumstantial attraction connected AI. The institution plans for nan AI section to grounds yearly gross of ₩5 trillion (around $3.5 billion) by 2030, and expects AI-driven B2C and B2B services arsenic good arsenic related infrastructure to thrust that growth.

The telecom elephantine precocious unveiled an AI infrastructure effort, offering Nvidia Blackwell GPUs-as-a-service, and earlier this period partnered pinch OpenAI to create AI information centers successful southwestern Korea arsenic portion of nan ‘Stargate Korea’ initiative.