SEOUL, June 16 (UPI) -- South Korea's SK Group will join hands with Amazon Web Services, know as AWS, the world's top cloud provider, to build a large-scale artificial intelligence data center in Ulsan, some 250 miles southeast of Seoul.
The Ulsan Metropolitan City government announced Monday that the two parties would invest $5.1 billion to build a 41-megawatt facility by 2027 and expand it to 103 MW by 2029.
However, details such as the specific investment breakdown between the two partners have not been disclosed. The project is scheduled to kick off this month, with a groundbreaking ceremony projected in August or September. Once complete, the data center will be powered by 60,000 graphics processing units
"SK applied for construction of the data center in January, and we granted approval last month. Our dedicated officials will support the project," Ulsan Mayor Kim Doo-gyeom told a press briefing.SK Telecom, a major subsidiary of SK Group and the country's largest mobile operator, is predicted to lead the joint project with AWS.
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During the Mobile World Congress in March in Spain, SK Telecom CEO Ryu Young-sang revealed a plan to construct a data center equipped with 60,000 GPUs. In April, SK Telecom and affiliate SK Broadband reportedly spent more than $20 million to secure a 387,500-square-foot site -- about the size of seven football fields -- in an Ulsan industrial complex.
Nearby, SK Group unit SK Gas operates a liquefied natural gas-combined heat and power plant, a significant advantage given the high electricity demands of mega-scale data centers.
Comments from SK Telecom were not available.
