en.Wedoany.com Reported - Recently, South Korea's SK Telecom has entered the final negotiation stage for minority equity financing of the Ulsan AI Data Center. The project plans to introduce a consortium of investors including KKR, IMM Investment, and Stonebridge Capital, with a transaction structure involving up to 49% equity. Market information indicates that relevant parties are targeting the signing of a share purchase agreement by the end of this month as they advance detailed negotiations.
The Ulsan AI Data Center is one of the key artificial intelligence infrastructure projects under construction in South Korea. Behind the project, it integrates SK Group's telecommunications, cloud, energy, and data center resources, and forms a linkage with AWS in the deployment of AI infrastructure in South Korea. This minority equity financing is not an ordinary financial transaction but a move to supplement capital and share risks around large-scale AI computing infrastructure. Building an AI data center requires upfront investment in land, electricity, cooling, networks, servers, GPU clusters, and operating systems, with long construction cycles and high capital expenditures. It is impractical for a single company to bear all the financial pressure alone. By introducing external capital, SK Telecom can maintain project control while freeing up more capital for subsequent AI computing power, cloud services, and data center expansion.
Previously disclosed plans for the project show that the Ulsan AI Data Center aims to achieve a 100MW capacity by 2029 and is considered a key node in South Korea's development of national-level AI infrastructure. Demand for domestic AI models, cloud services, semiconductors, enterprise intelligence, and high-performance computing is growing in South Korea, and data centers are evolving from traditional IDC facilities into critical foundations supporting the AI industry chain. Ulsan itself has an industrial base, energy support, and land conditions. If the project proceeds as planned, it will help South Korea form a new AI infrastructure cluster outside the capital region, alleviate the over-concentration of computing facilities, and drive demand for local energy, telecommunications, engineering, and operation and maintenance services.
From the transaction structure, the arrangement of up to 49% minority equity indicates that SK retains project control while sharing construction financial pressure with financial investors. KKR, as a major international investment institution, along with IMM Investment and Stonebridge Capital as domestic South Korean investors, if they ultimately participate together, will help strike a balance between foreign capital capabilities and local capital involvement. For AI data center projects, stable capital structure, long-term fund matching, and subsequent expansion financing capabilities will directly impact whether the project can smoothly progress from initial construction to larger-scale deployment.
Subsequent progress still depends on agreement signing, investment conditions, project construction milestones, GPU and power resource availability, and the pace of AWS-related AI cloud service deployment. If the Ulsan AI Data Center financing is successfully completed, South Korea's AI infrastructure construction will enter a more substantial capital investment phase, and SK Telecom will further transition from a traditional telecommunications operator to an AI computing power and digital infrastructure operator.
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