South Korea bets $357.5B on AI data center buildout through 2035
Source: Co
South Korea is consolidating its AI infrastructure ambitions under three chaebol giants—SK Group, GS Group, and Naver—a strategic move that mirrors how the country mobilized semiconductors and displays decades ago, but with substantially higher capital requirements and geopolitical stakes. The 18.4GW target by 2035 is designed to position Korean companies to host their own frontier models and reduce dependency on cloud providers, a defensive play against U.S. and Chinese dominance in AI infrastructure. Seoul is treating AI infrastructure as essential national infrastructure requiring coordinated private capital but government-level orchestration—the same approach it applied to broadband in the 2000s.