Lambda CEO upbeat on AI partnership with SK Telecom

Lambda CEO Stephen Balaban expressed his anticipation of teaming up with SK Telecom, South Korea's largest wireless carrier by membership, ahead of his upcoming visit to the country as a keynote speaker for the SK AI Summit on Nov. 4-5.

“As we continue working toward a world where access to computing is as easy and ubiquitous as electricity, there’s no better partner than SK Telecom -- a telecommunications company that connects people around the world and truly understands how AI works,” the CEO said in an interview with the Korean telecom carrier.

Founded in 2012, Lambda is a GPU-as-a-service company that provides AI cloud services by sourcing GPUs from Nvidia. GPUaaS allows companies to rent resources in a virtual environment without directly purchasing GPUs. Lambda’s clients include global tech giants like Intel and Microsoft. In February, SK Telecom invested $20 million in Lambda.

The Korean telecom carrier plans to launch an AI infrastructure business for domestic companies starting in December, based on Lambda's GPU resources.

Balaban complimented SK Telecom on its well-positioned data center infrastructure, ready to host GPUs for use by customers in and out of the country.

“This partnership with SK Telecom gives us the opportunity to expand cloud services in Korea, a growing hub for tech and AI innovation. We’re looking forward to joining forces with SK Telecom to accelerate AI deployment and innovation across the region,” he added.

Balaban expects growing GPU demand in both Korea and the broader Asia-Pacific markets while evaluating the rapid pace of AI innovation in Korea.

“Every day, I see a cool new research paper or robotics demo from somebody at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology or Seoul National University. Those research advances are powered by GPU infrastructure,” he said.

At the SK AI Summit, Balaban’s keynote will cover the significance of frequently releasing high-quality open-source models for companies, and how inference models impact computing use and model performance improvements.

He will also participate in a panel discussion with SK Telecom CEO Ryu Young-sang and Smart Global Holdings CEO Mark Adams, where they will discuss the present and future of AI infrastructure.