SGC Energy, KT, and Mirae Asset to Develop 300MW AI Data Center in South Korea
February 4, 2026
A major South Korean energy firm is making a strategic pivot into the booming artificial intelligence infrastructure sector. SGC Energy has announced plans to construct a 300-megawatt data center in Gunsan, a coastal city in the North Jeolla province, marking its inaugural venture into the AI data center business. This move underscores the intensifying competition among the country's industrial conglomerates to capture a share of the rapidly growing demand for high-power computing facilities. The project is a joint effort involving key players from different sectors. SGC Energy will be joined by KT, one of South Korea's largest telecommunications providers and an emerging data center operator, and Mirae Asset Securities, a leading investment bank. The facility will be situated within the expansive Gunsan National Industrial Complex 2, an area already hosting major industrial facilities. The data center will occupy approximately 100,000 square feet of land owned by SGC Green Power, an affiliate of SGC Energy. Both companies are part of the OCI Group, a major South Korean chemicals conglomerate. Construction on the first phase, which will feature a 40MW modular data center, is scheduled to commence later this year. The company estimates that full operations for the initial phase will begin in the first quarter of 2028. This development is part of a broader national trend, with other conglomerates like Samsung and Hyundai also launching data center projects to support domestic AI services. Notably, the Gunsan location represents a geographical diversification, as most of South Korea's existing data center capacity is concentrated around the capital region of Seoul. The 300MW scale of the planned facility highlights the significant power requirements of modern AI workloads and signals a substantial infrastructure investment in a region poised for digital growth. This project is expected to bolster South Korea's domestic AI compute capacity and may influence future site selection strategies, encouraging development outside traditional hubs to leverage available land and power infrastructure.
Source: datacenterdynamics
