Will host 60,000 GPUs
SK Group and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are partnering on an AI data center in Ulsan, South Korea.
The data center will be located at the Mipo National Industrial Complex, and is set to house 60,000 GPUs.
The location isn't a typical data center hotspot, but was selected due to its easy access to large-scale electricity, with SK Gas' LNG combined heat and power plant nearby.
As reported by Chosun Economy, the data center will be developed in phases. The first phase will see 41MW of data center capacity built by November 2027, expanding to 103MW by February 2029. The campus could expand to 1GW in the future.
An inauguration ceremony will be held in June, and groundbreaking is planned for August 2025.
SK Telecom and SK Broadband, part of SK Group and in charge of the AI data center business, plan to invest 3.4 trillion won ($2.5bn) in AI by 2028, with trillions of won to be invested in the project with AWS alone. Chosun reports that AWS will invest around $4bn in the project.
According to SK Group, it will be the largest domestic data center to date.
The company previously announced plans to build gigawatt-scale AI data centers in "key regions" throughout South Korea. It is not clear if the AWS project is one of those.
Previously, the South Korean government announced plans for an AI infrastructure facility, the National AI Computing Center, which will house 15,000 GPUs.
AWS has a cloud region in South Korea, located in Seoul, with four availability zones that launched in 2016. The company is also building a data center in Seo-gu, Incheon.
In 2021, AWS announced it would be bringing its AWS Ground Station platform to the Seoul campus. The company previously partnered with SK Telecom on its Wavelength zone in the country.
Previously, AWS committed to spending $13bn on expanding its data center infrastructure in Australia.
