SK Square is using AI transformation to innovate its investment work and the business models of its portfolio companies.

SK Square said on Wednesday that it is redesigning investment work and the business models of its portfolio companies around AI, led by an internal "AI Innovation" organisation.

"AI native," as pursued by SK Square, is an approach that redesigns how the organisation works and its decision-making structure with AI at the centre. AI agents carry out tasks, and employees focus on judging and verifying the results.

The company also built a "sandbox" environment so employees can develop AI agents directly using various AI models. It opened part of its security infrastructure to broaden the scope of AI agent use. About 80 SK Square employees have developed about 90 AI agents and applied them to their work. It also built a large language model-based internal knowledge data hub called Kiwi. The system automatically accumulates reports and emails written by employees and manages them as shared organisational knowledge.

SK Square is also pushing innovation in the business models of its portfolio companies. It formed a "10x TF" with developers from SK Planet, 11st and T map Mobility to develop and apply an AI-based work automation system.

At 11st, it applied AI to repetitive tasks such as checking the consistency of search categories and reviewing product reviews. SK Square said this cut costs at 11st's operations centre organisation by about 50 percent and produced profit improvement effects worth tens of billions of won.

SK Square plans to expand such AI-based work innovation across the group's ICT services. It is also pursuing a plan to apply an AI-based integrated data management system to customer service areas such as SK Planet's OK Cashbag, 11st's product catalogue and T map Mobility's points of interest data.

Yong-hoon Kim (김용훈), head of AI Innovation at SK Square, said, "As the next stage of advances in AI chips and infrastructure, application competitiveness is becoming important," adding, "We will innovate customer service at portfolio companies with AI to create a turning point in the business model."