Rebellions, SKT, Arm partner on AI infrastructure

Author: Joe Peck

Rebellions, a South Korean semiconductor company, has announced a collaboration with South Korean telecommunications company SK Telecom (SKT) and British semiconductor and software design company Arm to develop AI inference infrastructure for sovereign AI and telecom-focused data centres.

The partnership will focus on building an AI server combining an Arm-designed data centre CPU with Rebellions’s AI accelerators. The system will be tested within SK Telecom’s data centre environment before potential wider deployment.

The initiative is intended to address growing demand for AI inference infrastructure, particularly in sectors requiring data sovereignty and telecom-specific processing capabilities.

The planned platform will integrate Arm’s AGI CPU, based on the Neoverse CSS V3 architecture, with Rebellions’ RebelCard accelerator. The companies will also work together on the supporting software stack, including firmware, to ensure compatibility and performance.

Development and validation of the AI server platform

Testing will take place in SK Telecom’s operational data centres, where the infrastructure will be assessed for performance and stability. This includes evaluating its suitability for large-scale data processing and AI models used in telecommunications environments.

There are also plans to assess the use of SK Telecom’s A.X K1 foundation model on the platform as part of the validation process.

Following testing, the companies will consider broader deployment opportunities, with a focus on telecom operators and public sector organisations that require independent AI infrastructure.

Jinwook Oh, CTO of Rebellions, says, “We expect this ‘one-team’ collaboration of experts to serve as a significant precedent in the industry for building AI-specialised infrastructure.”

Jaeshin Lee, Vice President and Head of AI Business Development at SK Telecom, adds, “By providing a full package that combines inference-optimised infrastructure with our proprietary foundation model, A.X K1, we will further strengthen our competitiveness in the AI data centre market.”

Eddie Ramirez, Vice President of the Cloud AI Business Unit at Arm, notes, “As AI infrastructure expands globally, CPUs play a critical role in coordinating workloads across accelerators, memory, and networking.

“Arm AGI CPU, built on Arm Neoverse CSS V3, was designed to deliver the performance and efficiency required for large-scale AI deployments. Together with Rebellions and SK Telecom, we’re enabling scalable infrastructure for sovereign AI and telecommunications markets.”