"Leaping Toward Becoming Asia's AI Infrastructure Hub"... National AI Computing Center Breaks Ground

Targeting Completion by 2028
Supplying Computing Resources to Academia, Industry, and Research
Supporting the Domestic AI Semiconductor Ecosystem

The National AI Computing Center has broken ground to expand South Korea's artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. The government plans to establish the center by 2028, aiming to supply resources necessary for AI research, development, and services, and to foster a domestic AI ecosystem.

At the groundbreaking ceremony for the National AI Computing Center held three days ago at the SolarCity Data Center Park site in Haenam County, Jeollanam-do, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT Baek Kyunghoon is delivering a speech. Photo by Eunseo Lee.

On August 3, the Ministry of Science and ICT held a groundbreaking ceremony for the National AI Computing Center at the Solar City Data Center Park site in Haenam-gun, Jeonnam Province.

The National AI Computing Center will serve as the core infrastructure for the AI Highway, securing AI computing resources to create an environment for AI research, development, and service. It also plans to boost the adoption of domestically developed AI semiconductors and support the growth of the local AI ecosystem.

This project is being led by the Samsung SDS consortium, comprised of Samsung SDS, Naver Cloud, Samsung C&T, Kakao, Samsung Electronics, and KT. In a public tender for operators held for about a month starting last September, the Samsung SDS consortium was the sole bidder for the Haenam Solar City location.

To pool public investment and private capital, the Ministry of Science and ICT established Korea AI Computing Center Co., Ltd. (KOACC) in June 2026, jointly funded by the Financial Services Commission’s National Growth Fund and the Samsung SDS consortium.

KOACC aims to complete the National AI Computing Center by 2028. Currently, the company is preparing the necessary infrastructure by applying for power supply with Korea Electric Power Corporation and constructing water supply pipelines for the center’s operations. Next year, KOACC plans to provide some AI computing resources from the Samsung SDS data center to meet the needs of academia, industry, and research institutions until the new center is ready.

The National AI Computing Center will offer AI computing infrastructure to academia, industry, and research organizations at reasonable prices, and will also respond to the government’s AI innovation demands to revitalize the domestic AI ecosystem. It will establish an R&D zone to provide a verification environment for the design and prototype development of domestic AI semiconductors, and support the commercialization of proven products to promote the activation of homegrown AI semiconductors.

Baek Kyunghoon, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT, stated, “By combining public and private efforts, we will simultaneously promote securing advanced GPUs and activating domestic AI semiconductors to secure full-stack AI competitiveness, and strive to become an AI infrastructure hub in Asia. With abundant renewable energy and scalable sites, we expect this project to become a key hub for the three mega-projects, serving as a balanced development model that enables both the region and the nation to grow together.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.