SK Telecom Americas

SK Telecom Ventures (SKTA) is the corporate venture capital arm of SK Telecom, South Korea's largest mobile carrier and a leading AI and digital-infrastructure conglomerate within SK Group. Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Santa Clara, California, SKTA invests in US and global private technology companies where a strategic relationship with SK Telecom can accelerate commercial success. Focus areas span mobile infrastructure, enterprise software, semiconductors, wireless telecommunications, media, and an increasingly central emphasis on frontier AI and foundation-model infrastructure. The firm is led by Founder and Managing Partner Kai Chen and Senior Managing Partner Min H. Park. SKTA operates two investment vehicles: the SK Innovation Fund (SKIF) for seed and early-stage deals, and the SK Acceleration Fund (SKAF) for mid- and growth-stage opportunities. The firm has completed 48 investments and 11 exits across the portfolio. Check sizes range from $3 million to $10 million at the growth end and up to $100 million for strategic commitments. Its most prominent bet is Anthropic, into which SK Telecom committed $100 million in mid-2023 at roughly a $5 billion valuation as part of a broader $200 million AI initiative. Other notable AI holdings include Perplexity, Twelve Labs, and Together AI -- the latter receiving SKTA's most recent disclosed investment in February 2025. SKTA's investment thesis is explicitly strategic: every deal is evaluated on whether a SK Telecom partnership can meaningfully accelerate the startup's commercial trajectory, giving portfolio companies access to one of the world's largest telecom and technology conglomerates as both customer and distribution partner. The firm's early and decisive positioning in generative AI -- backing Anthropic, Perplexity, and Twelve Labs -- establishes SKTA as one of the earliest Korean strategic investors in the current AI wave, bridging Silicon Valley innovation with the scale of Korea's SK Group across both the US and Asia-Pacific markets.