SK Group to Build 15GW AI Data Centers by 2035

SK Group chairman Choi Tae-won announced on June 29 that the conglomerate will build 15GW of AI data center capacity in South Korea by 2035. The plan calls for 1000 trillion KRW in total spending and positions the facilities as national AI infrastructure.

The scale matches the upper end of current global AI data center projects. SK Group framed the effort as a shift from exporting conventional goods toward exporting intelligent services. The same announcement included a separate 400 trillion KRW commitment from SK Hynix for semiconductor production in the southwest of the country, bringing combined semiconductor-related outlays to 1100 trillion KRW.

South Korea currently hosts far less than 15GW of AI-optimized data center capacity. The new target therefore requires construction of multiple large-scale sites plus the power and cooling infrastructure that supports them. Annual domestic investment is set to exceed 100 trillion KRW for the next decade.

The move places direct pressure on memory suppliers and power providers. SK Hynix already holds a leading share of high-bandwidth memory chips used in AI accelerators. Expanded data center capacity will increase demand for those chips inside the country and for export. Samsung, the other major Korean memory maker, faces the same demand environment but has not announced a matching data center program.

Power availability and grid upgrades form the most immediate constraint. A single gigawatt-scale data center cluster requires dedicated substations and, in many cases, new generation capacity. Korean utilities have not published detailed timelines for the additional power SK Group will need. Delays on the power side would push the 2035 capacity target later regardless of construction progress on the data center buildings themselves.

SK Group’s plan arrives as global AI training and inference workloads continue to grow. Training runs that once required weeks on hundreds of chips now run on clusters measured in tens of thousands. Inference traffic from consumer and enterprise applications adds a second, steadier load. Operators therefore seek sites with both large floor space and reliable high-voltage connections. Countries that can supply both at reasonable cost gain an edge in attracting AI workloads, according to analysis from The Verge.

South Korea already possesses advanced semiconductor fabrication and a dense engineering workforce. The new data center program attempts to combine those strengths with domestic demand for AI services. The stated goal is to turn Korea into a market where intelligent services are produced and consumed at scale rather than simply imported.

Memory prices have risen sharply in the last two quarters as AI demand outstripped supply. Industry forecasts cited in the announcement project further increases through 2027. SK Hynix’s additional 400 trillion KRW investment targets packaging capacity and next-generation high-bandwidth memory nodes. If the schedule holds, the new lines could ease some price pressure by 2028, yet analysts note that only 15 to 20 percent of announced capacity is likely to be online by then, per Bloomberg.

The combined semiconductor and data center spending also affects equipment suppliers outside Korea. European and American vendors of power systems, liquid cooling, and high-speed networking stand to receive orders. At the same time, Korean construction and civil engineering firms will handle the majority of site work, keeping a large share of spending inside the domestic economy.

Grid planners must decide how much new renewable or gas-fired generation to add versus relying on existing nuclear capacity. Each 15GW increment roughly equals the output of 12 to 15 large nuclear reactors. Without corresponding generation additions, the data centers would compete with industrial and residential demand during peak hours. The government has not released a coordinated power plan alongside SK Group’s announcement, leaving open the question of whether supply or demand will be curtailed if shortages occur.

Skeptics inside the power sector point out that similar large-scale data center commitments in other countries have required years of regulatory approvals and grid studies before construction could begin. SK Group’s timeline assumes those steps will move faster in Korea than they have elsewhere. Execution risk therefore sits with regulators and utilities as much as with the company itself.

The next indicators to watch are the first environmental impact assessments for the southwest semiconductor sites and any public filings on power purchase agreements for the data centers. Quarterly memory shipment data from SK Hynix will also show whether domestic demand is already absorbing a larger share of production. If power infrastructure announcements lag behind the 2027 construction milestones SK Group has signaled, the 15GW target will slip. If those announcements keep pace, South Korea will have created one of the largest concentrated AI infrastructure programs outside the United States and China.