SK Telecom Plans 15-Gigawatt AI Data Center Buildout by 2035

SK Telecom has announced one of the largest artificial intelligence infrastructure plans in Asia: building AI data centers with a combined capacity of up to 15 gigawatts across South Korea by 2035. The company wants the country to become a regional computing hub for global technology firms.

The first data center under the program is already under construction in the city of Ulsan. That is where SK Telecom will launch a facility in partnership with Amazon Web Services, with operations planned to begin in the second half of 2027, alongside a parallel "AI factory" built with Nvidia that is set to come online the same year.

Investment scale

The cost of building the infrastructure alone runs into the tens of billions of dollars. By the company's own estimates, every gigawatt of AI computing capacity requires spending of around 70 trillion won, or about $45.8 billion, which at the targeted 15 gigawatts adds up to a total bill in the hundreds of billions of dollars spread over the coming decade.

SK Telecom is not going it alone. Other companies within the SK Group are expected to take part in carrying out the plan, including those responsible for semiconductors, energy and engineering, which is meant to secure both the power supply and the chips needed to run and equip the new data centers.

Asia's infrastructure race

The plan is part of a broader race among Asian countries for leadership in AI computing infrastructure, a contest that also includes Japan, Singapore and China. Thanks to the strong position Samsung and SK hynix hold in memory and chip manufacturing, South Korea wants to turn its industrial edge into an advantage in computing power for global customers.

This AI data center project is designed to build ahead of demand the computing infrastructure the global AI ecosystem will need. We will work closely with the government, industry and local communities to help Korea become a key AI infrastructure hub in Asia - Jung Jai-hun, President and CEO of SK Telecom

What it means for the market

SK Telecom's president compared the AI data center investment to two earlier landmark infrastructure projects in Korea's history: the Gyeongbu Expressway from 1968 and the nationwide broadband network from 1998. It's a signal that the company and the government view AI computing power as strategic infrastructure on par with roads or the internet, not just another telecom product.

For the global AI market, the announcement means another major injection of computing capacity in a region where demand for model training and inference is growing faster than supply. The involvement of AWS and Nvidia also shows that major cloud and chip providers are looking for local partners to build infrastructure closer to customers in Asia, rather than relying solely on data centers in the United States.

For Polish and European AI companies, SK Telecom's announcement is a reminder of just how large a scale of investment today's leaders in Asian computing infrastructure are operating at, compared with data center projects currently planned in Poland or Central Europe. The growing competition for computing power and the energy to run AI server farms also weighs on European investment plans, where access to cheap energy and land for data centers is becoming an increasingly critical constraint.

Sources: SK Telecom plans 15GW AI data center buildout across Korea by 2035 (koreatimes.co.kr), SK Telecom Pursues 15GW AI Data Center Buildout, Aiming to Become Asia's AI Infrastructure Hub (prnewswire.com)