South Korea is rapidly transforming into a global hub for artificial intelligence, driven by major international technology investments announced at the APEC summit in Gyeongju. This surge addresses previous difficulties the country faced in attracting such projects due to shortages of GPUs and suitable land. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has committed to a $5 billion (approximately 7 trillion won) investment plan by 2031 to bolster the nation's data center network and computing capacity. This includes plans for two additional AI data centers in the Incheon and Gyeonggi areas, and the creation of the "Ulsan AI Zone," a 100 MW center funded with approximately $4 billion in collaboration with SK Group. A cornerstone of the national strategy is the agreement with Nvidia, which guaranteed the supply of 260,000 GPUs—more than five times the number currently operating in the country. Fifty thousand of these GPUs are earmarked to build the “National AI Computing Center” in Solaseedo, Haenam County, which will serve as the foundation for the national AI infrastructure and provide essential resources to local research centers, universities, and startups like Naver, LG AI Research Center, and SK Telecom. Finally, OpenAI is strengthening its presence by collaborating with Samsung and SK Group to build AI data centers locally and participating in the massive $500 billion “Stargate” project, formalizing this partnership through a memorandum of understanding (MOU) and letter of intent (LOI).

Would you like to delve deeper into the specific agreements, such as the required monthly supply of 900,000 high-performance DRAM modules requested by OpenAI, or examine the role of the National AI Computing Center in supporting the race for "national artificial intelligence" among Korean tech giants?