SK Telecom Unveils 15GW AI Data Center Plan to Position Korea as Asia's AI Hub

SK Telecom said it will move forward with building a nationwide AI data center network with a capacity of up to 15 gigawatts (GW), a scale the company says would establish South Korea as Asia's central hub for AI computing infrastructure. The announcement, made in Seoul, frames the initiative as a strategic response to surging global demand for AI training and inference capacity.

At the core of the plan is the Ulsan AI Data Center, currently under construction, which SKT intends to expand into a cluster exceeding 2GW across the southeastern Gyeongsang region. A further 1GW facility is planned for the southwestern Jeolla region, bringing the company's near-term domestic capacity to 5GW, with operations phased in beginning in 2029 en route to the eventual 15GW target.

SK Telecom is positioning itself as the "AI Infrastructure Architect" of the wider SK Group, coordinating semiconductor, energy and data-center-operation capabilities spread across affiliated companies into a single full-stack offering. The company noted that a typical 1GW-class AI data center can cost roughly 70 trillion won to build, with funding expected to come from a mix of corporate investment, strategic partners, long-term customer contracts and project financing.

SKT cited a McKinsey & Company estimate that global data center demand will grow 19-22% annually while supply lags, leaving a shortfall of roughly 15GW in the U.S. alone by 2030 — a gap it argues creates an opening for Korea. The company pointed to the country's strengths in high-bandwidth memory production, stable nuclear and LNG-based power supply, and experience running gigawatt-scale semiconductor fabs as reasons global technology firms are increasingly looking at Korea for AI data center investment.

The buildout is also tied to the South Korean government's "AI G3" ambition of ranking among the world's top three AI powers alongside the United States and China, as well as goals for more balanced regional economic development. SKT described the project as the country's third major infrastructure leap, following the Gyeongbu Expressway in 1968 and the rollout of high-speed internet in 1998.

"This project is about preparing the computing infrastructure the global AI ecosystem will need," SKT CEO Jung Jai-hun said, adding that the company would work with government and industry partners toward the hub goal. SK Telecom has already been expanding its AI infrastructure partnerships with firms including Nvidia and AWS, and plans to begin operating a next-generation "AI Factory" data center from 2027 before scaling it to gigawatt capacity.