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SK Telecom invests $3 million in AI startup Twelve Labs

Published: 13 Dec. 2024, 15:44

JIN EUN-SOO
[email protected]

From left, Twelve Labs co-founder and CTO Aiden Lee, co-founder and CEO Jae Lee and President and CSO Yoon Kim [TWELVE LABS]

SK Telecom (SKT) plans to invest $3 million in U.S.-based video analyzing startup Twelve Labs, the Korean telecommunication company said Friday. The funds are part of the $30 million Twelve Labs has attracted from a group of infrastructure companies including Databricks and Snowflake Ventures.

The San Francisco-based startup founded in 2021 specializes in developing AI models that can understand and parse videos. It landed $50 million in a Series A round led by the Nvidia-backed NVentures and New Enterprise Associates.

The startup was co-founded and lead by Korean leader Jae Lee.

Twelve Labs' Marengo service is able to find specific moments in a video by understanding its scenes. Pegasus is a video-to-text service that summarizes a video and answers questions about the content.

SKT is vying to integrate its AI capacity to offer advanced AI services or utilize them in monitoring systems, replacing the tedious human work of having to monitor CCTV footage for a long time.

Twelve Labs will also join the SK Telecom-lead K-AI Alliance, which aims to create synergy among some 23 AI-related member startups.

BY JIN EUN-SOO [[email protected]]