KT Corporation Collaborates with Databricks to Accelerate Data and AI Innovation in Korea

Seoul, November 6, 2024 – KT Corporation, South Korea’s leading telecommunications company, today announced that it has formed a strategic partnership with Databricks, the Data and AI company, to accelerate data and AI innovation in Korea.

With almost 140 years of telecommunications history in Korea, KT plays a major role in Korea’s information and communications technology sector with its development of innovative 5G technology and intelligent networks. KT is investing heavily in AI and building an AI transformation (AX) innovation platform with the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform as its backbone.

From L-R: Arsalan Tavakoli, Co-Founder and Senior Vice President for Field Engineering at Databricks and Seung-pil Oh, CTO and Head of the Technology Innovation Division at KT.

Under this partnership, KT and Databricks will collaborate on:

1. Building a scalable and future-ready data and AI platform on Databricks Data Intelligence Platform
   KT chose to modernize and build a future-ready and scalable data platform on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform to innovate KT’s data and AI services. The Databricks Data Intelligence Platform democratizes access to analytics and intelligent applications by marrying customers’ data with powerful AI models tuned to the unique characteristics of their business. The Data Intelligence Platform is built on a lakehouse foundation of open data formats and open governance to ensure that all data is completely within the customers’ control.
2. Supporting a go-to-market strategy for the Korean sovereign cloud market
   Databricks will support KT’s commitment to driving the data and AI transformation of the public sector and regulated industries including the financial services sector in Korea through KT’s Secure Public Cloud. By leveraging the advanced security of confidential computing, customers can process even their most sensitive data in the cloud, empowering them to unlock the full potential of AI.
3. End-to-end generative AI support on Databricks
   As the unified data and AI platform that enables end-to-end generative AI experimentation to production, the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform will be used to assist KT in realizing its goals for AI models customized to the Korean market to enable emerging AI use cases for different industry verticals.
4. Data and AI center of excellence for KT and upskilling KT employees in advanced data and AI skills
   As part of KT’s AICT transformation, Databricks will explore ways to support KT in setting up a Data and AI Center of Excellence to advance KT’s employees in advanced data, analytics and AI skill sets, and enable KT group-wide upskilling and support.

“We are pleased to establish a strategic partnership with Databricks, a global Data and AI company, to drive the expansion of AX for our customers. Through this collaboration, Korean customers will also be able to freely leverage the latest data and AI platforms in a secure, enhanced cloud environment. KT will continue to expand collaborations with various specialized solution providers both domestically and internationally,” said Seung-pil Oh, CTO and Head of the Technology Innovation Division at KT.

“We are excited about our strategic partnership with KT to drive data and AI transformation for KT and for the larger Korean market, taking data intelligence – AI tailored to an organization’s data – to Korean organizations across the private and public sectors. Together, we will upskill and train KT employees in advanced data and AI skills to lead this data and AI transformation,” said Arsalan Tavakoli, Co-Founder and Senior Vice President for Field Engineering at Databricks.

About KT Corporation

KT Corporation is a leading company in Korea’s telecommunications and ICT industries. By building an AX innovation platform based on differentiated AI, Big Data and Cloud competitiveness, and offering it with outstanding network infrastructure, KT is driving evolution into an AICT (AI and ICT) company.

About Databricks

Databricks is the Data and AI company. More than 10,000 organisations worldwide — including Block, Comcast, Condé Nast, Rivian, Shell and over 60% of the Fortune 500 — rely on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform to take control of their data and put it to work with AI. Databricks is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices around the globe, and was founded by the original creators of Lakehouse, Apache Spark™, Delta Lake and MLflow. To learn more, follow Databricks on LinkedIn, X and Facebook.