SK Telecom said that it acquired 20.77 percent of Konan Technology from SK Communications at 22.4 billion won ($15.8 million), to become the second-largest shareholder of the Seoul-based software company.
The move is part of SK Telecom’s effort to diversify its business portfolio away from the traditional telecom sector, where growth has been slowing.
Konan Technology, founded in 1999, specializes in big data-based software, such as natural language processing and video analytics.
Through the strategic partnership with the company, SK Telecom hopes to tap into Konan Technology’s original technologies to improve its "A." virtual assistant app.
The A. app, which began a test run as an open beta service in May, is a combination of a chatbot, content curator and daily task manager. SK Telecom said that it will adopt Konan Technology’s search engine and speech synthesis technologies to enhance the service quality of the A. app, and jointly develop a new business targeting corporate clients.
“We expect that Konan’s AI[artificial intelligence] technologies would add synergy to SK Telecom’s AI business expansion, and also that Konan would be able to take a step forward through the collaboration with SK Telecom,” said Lee Sang-ho, SK Telecom chief technology officer.