SK Telecom Co., South Korea's leading telecommunications company, said Wednesday it will join hands with Perplexity, a U.S. artificial intelligence startup, in a bid to transform the global search engine market. In a joint press conference in Seoul, SK Telecom and Perplexity outlined their vision to co-lead the AI search market by making mutual investments to develop a personal AI agent (PAA) and AI search services targeting both global and South Korean users. "Cooperation with Perplexity, a dark horse in the global AI search engine market, will create unprecedented value and experience for both domestic and global customers with AI technology," SK Telecom CEO Ryu Young-sang said. As part of the collaboration, Perplexity will invest in SK Telecom's U.S.-based AI subsidiary, Global AI Platform Co., which is set to launch a global PAA service in the world's biggest market. Through this investment, Perplexity will become a key search partner, helping SK Telecom's PAA service deliver a wide array of informat ion using multiple large language models. This partnership builds on SK Telecom's earlier investment of $10 million in Perplexity in June. In addition to their global efforts, SK Telecom and Perplexity also plan to develop an AI search engine tailored specifically to South Korean users, enhancing SK Telecom's local AI assistant service, A. Source: Yonhap News Agency