Lee Gyu-lee is a business writer at The Korea Times, focusing primarily on IT & telecommunications, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and KOTRA. Prior to this, she has covered a wide range of cultural news, from film, television and K-pop to lifestyle and fashion.
LG bets on AI data center, ESS as future growth driver
LG Electronics' coolant distribution unit on display / Courtesy of LG Group
By Lee Gyu-lee
Group integrates affiliates to accelerate AI infrastructure push
LG Group is strengthening its bet on artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, anchoring future growth in AI data centers and energy storage systems (ESS) and unifying affiliate capabilities under its “One LG” strategy.
The strategy integrates capabilities across affiliates to deliver end-to-end solutions for AI data centers. Under this framework, LG Electronics provides heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, LG Energy Solution supplies power infrastructure such as uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems and ESS, while LG Uplus and LG CNS handle data center design, construction and operations.
“Technologies and the rules of competition are changing, while customer expectations are rising,” LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo said in his New Year’s message, underscoring the strategy.
“We must move beyond the formulas of past success and leap toward new innovation.”
The group’s push comes as the ongoing boom in AI data centers — especially in the United States — rapidly drives up electricity demand and turns grid stability into a critical constraint for high-density AI workloads, fueling a potentially unprecedented buildout of battery storage.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects new ESS capacity to reach about 24.3 gigawatts in 2026, up by more than 60 percent from last year’s record of roughly 15 gigawatts.
One LG has already proven its technical edge by winning Korea’s first overseas AI data center construction deal last August, taking on a 100 billion won ($67.1 million) worth project in Jakarta, Indonesia. Scheduled to be completed this year, the facility is set to become the largest data center in the country.
A photo of LG Energy Solution’s grid-scale energy storage battery containers / Courtesy of LG Energy Solution
LG Electronics is positioning itself as the thermal backbone of the group’s AI data center push, leveraging its HVAC portfolio.
The company supplies large air‑cooled chillers that use chilled water to keep server rooms at stable temperatures, a critical requirement as AI data centers pack in dense clusters of graphics processing units (GPUs) that draw far more power than conventional servers and generate intense heat.
Last July, the company supplied hundreds of billions of won worth of air‑cooled chillers to a hyperscale AI data center in the U.S. In September, it signed an agreement to provide cooling solutions to an upcoming AI data center in Neom, Saudi Arabia, which is slated to become the Middle East’s largest.
LG Electronics has also developed its own compressors and motors, and applied oil‑free magnetic bearing technology in large air‑cooled chillers for the first time globally.
The company is advancing next‑generation cooling technologies such as liquid‑cooling solutions, which work by attaching metal cooling plates to high‑heat components and running coolant through them to draw off heat directly.
LG Electronics has also developed its own coolant distribution unit (CDU) to cut energy use and boost reliability by building in sensor redundancy. It is further expanding into high‑efficiency immersion cooling, recently partnering with U.S.-based Green Revolution Cooling.
An artificial intelligence (AI)-generated image of LG CNS' AI Box cluster, set to be built in Busan / Courtesy of LG CNS
Meanwhile, LG Energy Solution is emerging as the group’s key lever in power infrastructure as AI data centers turn energy security into a strategic priority.
The company has already established multiple ESS manufacturing footholds across North America, including plants in Michigan and a Canadian battery joint venture, NextStar Energy.
It is also strengthening system integration capabilities through its Boston‑based subsidiary Vertech, enabling it to offer turnkey ESS solutions that bundle batteries, power electronics and software. The strategy has helped the company win a string of supply contracts, seeing about a 40-percent growth in its North American ESS revenue last year.
LG Energy Solution has been moving early to capture AI‑driven demand, building the first large‑scale U.S. production system dedicated to lithium iron phosphate batteries for ESS and locking in major storage contracts with customers, including Poland's state-run utility firm Polska Grupa Energetyczna and U.S. firms Terra‑Gen and Excelsior Energy Capital.
The company unveiled a UPS battery designed to maximize backup power last May and has landed a deal to supply a battery energy storage systems solution to New Mexico’s largest Santa Teresa solar and storage project last July.
An artificial intelligence (AI)-generated image of LG CNS' AI Box module / Courtesy of LG CNS
Under the group-wide strategy, LG Uplus is tasked with building ultra low-latency network infrastructure to minimize idle time caused when thousands of GPUs run in parallel inside AI data centers.
Drawing on its experience from building and running Korea’ first internet data center, the company also offers proof‑of‑concept environments that allow customers to test systems under real‑world conditions.
The company is developing an AI-powered data center infrastructure management (DCIM) system that it plans to deploy across the upcoming Paju AI data center in Gyeonggi Province. The system will act as the brain of operations by monitoring power usage, temperature and humidity, cooling conditions and equipment anomalies in real time while using AI analysis to allocate resources optimally.
LG Uplus plans to use the Paju center as a launchpad for gradually expanding its AI computing infrastructure, while strengthening an integrated consulting business that designs, builds and operates customers’ data centers. It is also accelerating the development and deployment of immersion cooling technology to handle rising GPU heat loads more efficiently.
Meanwhile, LG CNS is leveraging its expertise in data center design-build-operate services to provide end-to-end lifecycle support from consulting and design to operations.
The company has recently introduced a modular AI Box solution — a small, container‑based AI data center that can be deployed without a dedicated building — cutting deployment time from up to two years to as little as six months.
The standardized, package‑type modules, which can accommodate up to 576 GPUs per unit, can be combined into larger clusters, allowing customers to scale from small deployments to hyperscale AI data centers. They are designed to integrate seamlessly with LG Electronics’ cooling systems and LG Energy Solution’s UPS batteries.