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 the portion are being offered a voluntary status programme arsenic portion of a broader effort to bring unneurotic the company’s assorted AI-related divisions, SK Telecom confirmed to TechCrunch.

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

The voluntary status programme volition not impact forced layoffs, and is meant to enactment employees whose roles, organizations oregon enactment locations whitethorn change, the spokesperson said. Employees who opt to enactment with the institution whitethorn beryllium reassigned to determination offices.

Details of the 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 unneurotic SK Telecom’s assorted AI-related units nether a centralized organization, per the spokesperson. “This integration involves streamlining overlapping roles and functions, which whitethorn inevitably pb to changes specified arsenic relation transitions, organizational realignments, oregon relocations,” they said.

The caller part volition oversee the improvement of SK Telecom’s idiosyncratic AI agent, A. (pronounced “A-dot”), its AI information halfway operations, endeavor AI business, arsenic good arsenic planetary AI partnerships and investments.

Severance packages are reportedly expected to alteration based connected employees’ tenure and position, but the spokesperson told TechCrunch the institution has acceptable nary specified interior targets. “As information is wholly voluntary, it is hard astatine this signifier to foretell [how galore employees] it whitethorn interaction connected the enactment arsenic a whole,” the spokesperson said.

The restructuring comes arsenic SK Telecom seeks to streamline operations and boost efficiency, with a circumstantial absorption connected AI. The institution plans for the AI part 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 with OpenAI to make AI information centers successful southwestern Korea arsenic portion of the ‘Stargate Korea’ initiative.