SK Telecom, one of South Korea’s largest telcos, reported an 11.1 percent year-on-year (YoY) increase in data center revenue, reaching KRW 102bn ($71.8m).

Commenting on future projects, Lee Hyunwoo, head of data center operations, said that the aim is to open hyperscale data centers by 2027. Lee also added that there is a pipeline of potential data centers until 2030 in the Seoul metropolitan area.

CFO Kim Yang-Seob said that in the short term, the company would focus on increasing data center utilization rates while generating profit through its GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) business. The company began offering the service in January 2025 and announced that Nvidia H200s would be added later in the year.

In the long term, Kim stated that the company would prepare for “hyperscale AIDC (AI data center) business.” This strategy is evidenced by SK Telecom’s November 2024 announcement that it would build gigawatt-scale facilities throughout South Korea, and its data center and AI-related partnerships signed in March of this year.

The company currently operates eight data centers, some of which are operated by SK Broadband. This includes a facility in Yangju, a city north of Seoul, which opened in February.

The company’s AI business revenue grew 15.6 percent YoY, with even higher rates of growth seen in its AIX division, which provides AI-powered B2B services. Launched in 2024, it reported a revenue of KRW 45.2bn ($31.7m), up 27.7 percent YoY. Part of the AIX offering is Adot Biz, an AI agent currently undergoing beta testing that could potentially launch by June.

The nascence of the company’s data center and AI-related business is reflected in its relatively small contribution to total revenue, which was down 0.5 percent YoY to KRW 4.5tn ($3.1bn). Net income also decreased 0.1 percent YoY to KRW 361.6bn ($254m).

It should be noted that the company’s data center and AI-related business is a relatively small proportion of total revenue.

The company’s results were overshadowed by a cyberattack in April that resulted in a data breach. The scale of the breach is unclear, but customer confidence has been shaken, with the Chosun Daily reporting that over 300,000 customers had switched providers since the attack.

It also announced on May 5th that new mobile subscriptions would be indefinitely suspended until further notice.

SK Telecom, which belongs to the SK Group chaebol, services 23 million customers, which is approximately half of South Korea’s population.