KT Corporation accelerates Korean digital transformation with custom AI agents

KT Corporation, one of South Korea’s largest telecom and ICT companies, has partnered with Microsoft to spark rapid digital transformation and AI innovation across 650,000 businesses and 17 million consumers. A five-year, multibillion-dollar strategic agreement covers custom development of GPT-4o and small language models, deployment of Copilot-based AI assistants for internal, B2B, and consumer use, and creation of a sovereign cloud using Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty. KT is launching an AX-specialized company to deliver digital AI transformation services for Korea, relying on Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service, Copilot Studio, Azure AI Studio, Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Microsoft Fabric. The collaboration will deliver secure, private cloud and AI solutions for public and regulated sectors, while empowering businesses with tailor-made industry AI capabilities. KT and Microsoft are co-investing in R&D, building an ecosystem for AI startups, and establishing co-innovation centers targeting healthcare, education, and financial use cases. KT’s organization-wide upskilling and cloud modernization—with all workloads moving to Azure—will support rapid AI adoption. Industry-specific AI agents improve customer service chat, productivity, and compliance for both businesses and consumers. KT and Microsoft are collaborating on robust Responsible AI frameworks and upskilling for 19,000+ KT employees and over 5,800 specialists to strengthen Korea’s digital competitiveness. Shinhan Bank and other leading organizations in Korea are participating as industry reference customers, especially for financial sector transformation using AI. The partnership is projected to drive sovereignty, compliance, and innovation at national scale.