World’s biggest AI datacentre planned for South Korea

3GW behemoth intended to serve AI across the world could cost up to $35 billion

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South Korea datacentre campus will be built in stages to keep pace with demand

An investment group in South Korea is planning to build the world’s biggest datacentre – a 3GW mega datacentre intended to provide AI services to the world at a cost of up to $35 billion.

The facility is planned for South Korea’s South Jeolla province in the south-west of the country, also known as Jeonnam. Construction is due to begin later this year with completion in 2028 at an initial cost of $10 billion. The group, called Stock Farm Road, claims to have struck a deal with the local authority in the region ensuring access to the necessary power and water.

Like most datacentre builds, the campus will be built out in stages as demand increases, so it will be some time before it reaches the full 3GW anticipated capacity. Moreover, the sudden surge in demand for AI datacentres means that there is a shortage of the GPUs for the datacentre servers required to efficiently conduct AI training and run generative AI applications.

Consequently, Nvidia can charge a hefty premium, while still maintaining a market share in excess of 90%. According to New Street Research, whilst a standard Intel or AMD-based server might cost around $5,000 per year to own and run, a Nvidia DGX H100 will cost more than $70,000, taking into account electricity, maintenance, software and capital cost depreciation.

A report in The Wall Street Journal states that the founders of Stock Farm Road include Brian Koo, grandson of the founder of conglomerate LG; and Amin Badr-El-Din, the founder and CEO of BADR Investments, which is based in London and Jordan.

Koo told the WSJ that while South Korea’s datacentre sector already comfortably serves the nation’s needs, the new facility will be able to serve AI training and inference applications across the world. He added that the project could “elevate Korea and the region to a new level of technological advancement and economic prosperity”.

In the UK, meanwhile, under the government’s plan for AI Growth Zones, the government is looking for ways to speed-up the planning permission process and leverage its power to provide the energy connections we need – at around just 500MW per zone.