Hyundai E&C races to build Korea's 1st AI-dedicated data center in record time
An image of Hyundai Engineering & Construction's data center in Pohang, South Gyeongsang Province, built exclusively for artificial intelligence workloads / Courtesy of Hyundai Engineering & Construction
Hyundai Engineering & Construction (E&C) has begun construction on Korea's first data center built exclusively for artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, the company said Monday, aiming to finish the project in a record 16.5 months.
Hyundai E&C signed the main contract with AI Factory Pohang PFV, the project's special-purpose vehicle, and has started installing precast concrete — factory-made concrete components assembled on site, rather than poured in place — for the facility in Pohang's Gwangmyeong general industrial complex. Construction began in June, with operations targeted for the second half of 2027.
The 40-megawatt facility will run on Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) and use liquid cooling, a system that circulates coolant directly to chips rather than relying on airflow, to handle the intense heat generated by AI servers — a first for a Korean data center, the company said.
It is designed to run at roughly 10 times the power density of a typical cloud data center to accommodate Nvidia's upcoming "Vera Rubin" AI chips, with a power usage effectiveness rating — a standard measure of energy efficiency, where a number closer to 1 indicates less energy lost to overhead such as cooling — of 1.25.
Hyundai E&C credited the accelerated timeline to its all-precast approach, the first time a Korean commercial data center has prefabricated its entire concrete structure, including slabs, walls and stairs.
The method is expected to cut structural work from about a year to two months. The builder also used "preconstruction services" to plan the project before breaking ground and a "fast-track" approach running design, permitting and site preparation in parallel, allowing construction to start about a month after Hyundai E&C joined the project.
Project developer Neo AI Cloud plans to offer GPU-as-a-service and AI platform services once the center opens. Hyundai E&C has built 19 data centers since 2004 — more than any other Korean builder — including Korea's only data center project for a global Big Tech company.
This article was published with the assistance of generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.