{"id":146643,"date":"2026-09-08T01:47:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T01:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/146643\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T01:47:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T01:47:16","slug":"in-the-aidc-era-telecoms-take-the-lead-skt-forms-aidc-triad-attracts-3-trillion-won-investment-in-sk-horizon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/146643\/","title":{"rendered":"[In the AIDC Era, Telecoms Take the Lead] SKT Forms AIDC Triad… Attracts 3 Trillion Won Investment in SK Horizon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n SK Broadband Spun Off to Form New Company
Groupwide Leadership by SK Telecom, Clear Division of Roles
Jaeheon Jung: “A Foundational Step toward Becoming the Asian AI Infrastructure Hub”\n <\/p>\n

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On July 27, SK Telecom established SK Horizon, a newly incorporated subsidiary specializing in AI infrastructure, by carrying out a spin-off of its subsidiary SK Broadband. This move aims to accelerate the company’s AIDC (AI Data Center) business. SK Telecom will oversee the group-wide AIDC operations, while the newly formed SK Horizon will focus on expanding the existing AIDC infrastructure business. SK Hyper will drive the development and construction of new gigawatt-scale AIDC projects as its core business, thereby forming a three-pronged strategy with an ambition to emerge as a global leader in the AIDC sector.<\/p>\n

Jaeheon Jung, Chief Executive Officer, recently addressed SK Telecom employees on the occasion of SK Horizon’s launch, saying, “We decided to spin off the AIDC business unit of SK Broadband to establish operational expertise and a swift decision-making system for the AIDC business,” adding, “This lays an important foundation for SK Telecom to become the hub of AI infrastructure in Asia.”<\/p>\n

CEO Jung emphasized, “In the AI era, the competition ultimately comes down to who possesses the most powerful infrastructure,” noting, “No model or service can exist without the underlying data centers and networks that support them.”<\/p>\n

SK Horizon: Operating and Expanding AI Infrastructure<\/p>\n

He made it clear that the establishment of SK Horizon serves to set distinct roles across affiliates under the clear goal of becoming an AI infrastructure company, as well as to build a prompt decision-making structure. SK Telecom will take overall charge of the AIDC business, while SK Hyper will place a primary focus on developing new AIDC projects starting with 5GW in 2029. The company will pursue large-scale hyper-scale mega projects requiring extensive land and electricity, setting mid-to-long-term targets such as 5GW by 2029 and 15GW by 2035.<\/p>\n

SK Horizon will be responsible for expanding the existing AIDC and core infrastructure such as submarine cables. It will lead the operation of a total of 318MW of infrastructure, including eight currently operating data centers (Seocho, two in Ilsan, Bundang, Gasan, Centum, Yangju, and Pangyo) as well as new facilities being built in Ulsan and Guro, and expand the submarine cable business.<\/p>\n

SK Broadband will focus on fixed-line, media, and enterprise businesses. CEO Jung stated, “With this additional restructuring, our company’s framework for driving the AI infrastructure business has become clear through three main pillars,” and added, “We will continue to build the foundations to stay ahead in the competition with flexibility and agility.”<\/p>\n

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Jaeheon Jung, Co-Chair of the AIDC Alliance and CEO of SK Telecom, is delivering the opening remarks at the AIDC Alliance launch ceremony held at Lotte Hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul on July 29, 2026. Photo by Dongju Yoon<\/p>\n

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Alongside this spin-off, SK Telecom secured an investment of 3.08 trillion won in SK Horizon from global private equity firm KKR and a consortium of IMM Investment and Stonebridge Capital. The transaction structure consists of SK Telecom selling existing shares worth 1.8811 trillion won, followed by a third-party allocation of new shares from SK Horizon amounting to 1.2 trillion won. After completion, the shareholding ratio will be reorganized to 51% for SK Telecom, 29% for KKR, and 20% for the IMM consortium. Maintaining a controlling stake, SK Telecom’s primary objective is to secure large-scale cash inflow through the sale of existing shares.<\/p>\n

SK Hyper: Leading New AIDC Development<\/p>\n

Minha Choi, a researcher at Samsung Securities, commented, “By separating the infrastructure business, which requires large-scale capital investment, into a standalone company and attracting external capital, the parent company is able to minimize its financial burden while continuing aggressive expansion. The cash inflow from the sale of existing shares will significantly enhance the parent company’s financial flexibility and funds management capacity,” she assessed.<\/p>\n

GSMA Intelligence, a research institute under the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA), recently echoed similar views on its podcast ‘Intelligence and Noise.’ It stated, “This equity structure brings in external capital while maintaining management rights,” and added, “This could be a new model for AIDC businesses that require large capital, as telecom operators lower their investment burden but still secure business leadership.”<\/p>\n

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Radhika Gupta, Head of Data Acquisition at GSMA Intelligence, noted, “Telecom companies no longer want to remain as mere ‘pipes’ through which data traffic passes as they did in the past. Investment in AIDC is both a means of securing new revenue streams and an effective way for telecom operators to expand their direct presence in the AI value chain,” she added.<\/p>\n

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This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 The Asia Business Daily. All rights reserved. Unauthorized AI training and use prohibited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SK Broadband Spun Off to Form New Company Groupwide Leadership by SK Telecom, Clear Division of Roles Jaeheon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[479,480,31,154,478,414,241,240,481,33,477],"class_list":["post-146643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sk","tag-economic","tag-issue","tag-korea","tag-news","tag-newspaper","tag-politics","tag-sk","tag-sk-group","tag-society","tag-south-korea","tag-the-asia-business-daily"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}