SK Group has struck a deal with OpenAI to develop an artificial intelligence data center in South Korea’s southwestern Honam region, marking the conglomerate’s second major cloud infrastructure partnership since August. The agreement comes four months after SK broke ground on a 103-megawatt facility in Ulsan with Amazon Web Services, a project housing 60,000 graphics processing units.
The successive partnerships reflect Chairman Chey Tae-won’s commitment to invest 82 trillion won ($61 billion) in AI and semiconductors through 2030, though the aggressive timeline raises questions about execution capacity and power grid constraints. SK Telecom will handle the OpenAI project as part of the Stargate initiative, while SK hynix separately agreed to supply high-bandwidth memory chips supporting OpenAI’s global infrastructure needs.
The dual-facility strategy aims to establish what SK describes as an AI corridor linking Korea’s southeastern and southwestern regions, potentially positioning the company as a major infrastructure provider in Asia-Pacific. Yet the plan depends heavily on securing reliable power supply—a challenge that prompted SK to locate the Ulsan facility near an LNG power plant. The Honam site selection and energy sourcing details remain undisclosed.
Industry observers note SK’s approach mirrors strategies by Samsung Electronics, which recently joined the Stargate program with plans to assess additional Korean data center capacity. Competition for limited power resources and construction talent could test whether both conglomerates can deliver on their ambitious buildout schedules.
