SK Group is building a massive artificial intelligence (AI) data center infrastructure totaling 15 gigawatts (GW) by 2030. The strategy is to absorb the explosive AI computing demand from global Big Tech companies, beginning in South Korea’s Yeongnam region. SK Telecom has been tasked with integrating and overseeing the group’s capabilities spanning semiconductors, construction, power, and telecommunications.
According to global consulting firm McKinsey on the 12th, surging demand for AI models is expected to create a supply shortfall of more than 15GW in the United States alone by 2030. South Korea is considered an optimal location for AI data center construction, as it is home to SK hynix — which mass-produces High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), a critical AI semiconductor component — and possesses a stable power base along with operational expertise in GW-scale factories.
SK’s blueprint envisions initial operations beginning at 5GW in 2029, scaling up to 15GW by 2030 in line with market demand. The group is currently investing approximately 7 trillion won (approximately $4.7 billion) to build a hyperscale data center in Ulsan equipped with 60,000 NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs), which will serve as the launching point for a cluster exceeding 2GW in the Yeongnam region. Industry estimates suggest that a single 1GW data center generates an investment impact of roughly 60 trillion to 70 trillion won (approximately $40 billion to $46.7 billion).
Underpinning this large-scale infrastructure investment is SK hynix’s forecast of a “historic supply shortage.” At the company’s Nasdaq listing event the previous day, SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung stated, “2027 will be the most challenging year for the entire memory industry from a supply perspective,” adding, “Customer demand continues to grow, but our production capacity has limits.” He further noted, “We expect customer demand to exceed supply capacity even beyond 2030.”
SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won also drew a line under the notion that memory semiconductors remain a traditional cyclical industry, forecasting, “I am confident that demand will continue to grow, and our supply capacity will never catch up with demand.” He projected that large-scale memory demand will persist until true artificial general intelligence (AGI) is realized.
AI data centers require power densities dozens of times higher than conventional facilities, making stable power procurement a decisive factor for project success. SK plans to build data centers primarily in non-metropolitan hubs with surplus power capacity, while concurrently utilizing renewable energy, battery energy storage systems (BESS), liquefied natural gas (LNG), and small modular reactors (SMR). The company maintains that building outside the Seoul metropolitan area reduces the burden of constructing large-scale new power grids, thereby lowering concerns about residential electricity rate hikes.
Institutional support is also expected to accelerate the timeline. Once the AI Data Center Special Act, passed by the National Assembly, takes effect in February 2027, measures such as one-stop permitting, timeout provisions, and exemptions from power grid impact assessments for non-metropolitan areas are expected to add momentum to the project. However, as the initiative involves the complex interplay of power, land, and permits, the speed of collaboration between the government, local authorities, and businesses remains a key challenge going forward.
Meanwhile, SK hynix listed its American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) on the Nasdaq on the 10th, raising $26.5 billion (approximately 39.7 trillion won) — the largest-ever U.S. listing by a foreign company. CEO Kwak Noh-jung explained that a primary objective of the listing was to narrow the physical and strategic distance to AI customers, expressing the company’s commitment to responding more closely to customer-specific product design requirements.
SK hynix is currently investing approximately $4 billion (around 6 trillion won) to build an advanced packaging plant in Indiana, with plans to invest an additional $10 billion (around 15 trillion won) to establish an AI solutions company. Chairman Chey Tae-won stated that SK Group has invested more than $35 billion (approximately 52.5 trillion won) in the United States to date, and that future investments will significantly exceed that figure. While leaving open the possibility of additional SK hynix share issuances, he emphasized that delivering favorable returns to new investors is the immediate priority.