SKT to invest $91.5 bil. for 'hyperscale' AI data centers in Yeongnam
SK Telecom chief executive officer Jung Jai-hun takes part in a public briefing on industrial development in southeastern Korea, held in Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province, Friday. Joint Press Corps
Korea's SK Telecom said Friday it will invest 140 trillion won ($91.5 billion) to transform the southeastern region of Yeongnam into Asia's artificial intelligence (AI) hub, with the construction of massive data centers there.
Jung Jai-hun, the chief executive officer of the telecom company, outlined the plan during a public briefing presided over by President Lee Jae Myung in the southeastern city of Jinju, as part of the government's megaproject centered on attracting massive investment in AI and high-tech industries.
Under the plan, SKT will start work on a 100-megawatt hyperscale AI data center in the port city of Ulsan, with the goal to start operations by the fourth quarter of next year.
It will later add 900 megawatts and an additional 1 gigawatt of AI data centers in the region outside of Ulsan, he said.
"The massive AI data centers could transform the region into a hub for the verification and expansion of manufacturing AI, when combined with the manufacturing capabilities in the region," Jung said.
SKT plans to expand its total AI data center capacity to 5 gigawatts by 2029, which Jung said would mark the first step in the company's long-term goal of building 15 gigawatts of data centers across the country.
The initial 5-gigawatt deployment would require some 2,500,000 square meters of land, some 3 million units of graphic processing units, 2.4 million units of high-bandwidth memory, or HBM chips, and around 350 trillion won in investments, Jung added.