Korea Inc. pledges $204B in Yeongnam for AI data centers, robot plants and launch vehicles

Korea Inc. will invest around 312 trillion won ($204 billion) in the southeastern region, mainly in building AI data centers, robot manufacturing facilities and developing new launch vehicles. 

The massive investments by SK Group, Samsung Group, Hyundai Motor Group, and Hanwha Group, LG Group and Doosan Group in the Yeongnam region — encompassing the Gyeongsang provinces and neighboring metropolitan areas — is the latest in a series of regional growth pushes by President Lee Jae Myung, alongside previous gigantic chip sector investments. 

SK Group will inject around 140 trillion won in Yeongnam for AI data centers with a total capacity of 2 gigwatts, with the first in Ulsan.

SK Telecom is currently working with Amazon Web Services to build a 100-megawatt hyperscale AI data center in the city, with a plan to start operations in the fourth quarter of next year. An additional 900 megawatts will follow gradually, SK said. 

It's part of SK's 1 quadrillion won investment pledge, which will start with 5 gigawatts of AI data center capacity in the first phase by 2029, before expanding to 15 gigawatts across the nation.

"The first-phase AI data center alone is a massive undertaking, requiring 300,000 GPUs," SK Telecom CEO Jung Jai-hun said during a public briefing held Friday in Jinju, South Gyeongsang.

"If a traditional data center was a warehouse for storing information, this new AI data center is a factory that produces 'token intelligence' from AI," Jung said. "Once this large-scale AI data center infrastructure is combined with Yeongnam's manufacturing capabilities, it can drive a genuine leap in productivity."

Samsung Group committed a total of 60 trillion won, with the majority going into Gumi, North Gyeongsang, for a humanoid robot manufacturing facility and a related AI data center. 

Samsung SDI, its battery-making subsidiary, will spend 16 trillion won to build a production line for solid-state batteries in Ulsan. Touted for high safety and energy density, Samsung SDI plans to start mass production of solid-state batteries in the second half of 2027, becoming the first in the world to do so.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics plans to develop Busan into a core production hub for high-performance package substrates and high-value multilayer ceramic capacitors, while Samsung Heavy Industries plans to invest in AI-factory equipment, robotics and autonomous-navigation technology at its Geoje shipyard.

Hanwha Group plans to invest a total of 55 trillion won to develop new launch vehicles, construct assembly facilities and launch an orbital data center by 2040.

In detail, Hanwha Aerospace has committed to an investment of roughly 23 trillion won in space launch vehicles, assembly facilities and test sites for launcher development, which will eventually transition to commercial launches.

Hanwha Systems plans to spend some 20 trillion won to acquire very-low-orbit synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites — which use radar signals rather than cameras to capture high-resolution images day or night and through cloud cover — along with an AI data center in space and satellite communication networks.

"Roughly 80 percent of the country's shipbuilding output, 61 percent of its aerospace production, 58 percent of its defense industry output and 44 percent of its automobile production are born right here in Yeongnam. Yeongnam is, in every sense, Korea's No. 1 manufacturing hub, and it holds enormous potential to become a global center for advanced manufacturing," President Lee Jae Myung said while thanking the conglomerates for their commitments. 

"The government intends to move forward in earnest to build a south coast aerospace industrial belt that connects satellites and launch vehicles with next-generation aircraft and emerging space industries," Lee said. "We will mobilize every capability the government has to actively support the aerospace companies in the Yeongnam region so they can grow into world-class companies."

The infrastructure will include a constellation of reconnaissance satellites at an altitude of 350 kilometers (217 miles) collecting data from land and sea, an orbiting AI data center positioned at 400 kilometers and a low-Earth-orbit satellite communications network at 900 kilometers that transmits imagery and other data in real time.

Hanwha Systems plans to launch and operate 64 SAR satellites by 2031 to maintain continuous real-time detection capability.

The information collected by its satellites will be stored and analyzed by the orbiting AI data center and relayed to the ground. 

Around 10 trillion will be poured into building a defense AI data center in Changwon, South Gyeongsang, which will integrate and utilize information collected across space, land, sea and air. The Changwon facility will begin operations this year with a capacity of 45 megawatts, expanding in stages to 135 megawatts by 2032. 

Hyundai Motor Group will spend 42 trillion won over the next decade to make Ulsan a hub for AI manufacturing, starting with an EV-dedicated assembly plant that is slated for mass production in September.

The automaker's ultimate goal is to develop what it calls AI-defined vehicles, or AI DVs — vehicles that use AI to learn from driving data and make autonomous decisions — to achieve Level 4 autonomous driving or higher, comparable to robotaxis.

Hyundai Mobis, its auto parts affiliate, will complete a battery system assembly line in Ulsan, while a motor and controller production line will be up and running in Daegu by 2030. Hyundai Wia is also constructing a production line for EV thermal management systems in Changwon, South Gyeongsang.

Supernal, a California-based air transport subsidiary of Hyundai, will open a research center in Yeongnam to develop next-generation aircraft built around electrified powertrains, though the exact location has not yet been disclosed. 

Additionally, LG Group announced plans to invest 9.4 trillion won in premium home appliance research and development, an expansion of semiconductor substrate production capacity and new display models in the Yeongnam region, while Doosan Group will divert another 5.1 trillion won into small modular reactors, large-scale nuclear power and gas and hydrogen turbines.

 BY SARAH CHEA   [[email protected]]