"The next three to five years are the golden window for competition in AI infrastructure. The government will provide full support not only for technology development but also for securing power and water resources." (Deputy Prime Minister Bae Kyung-hoon)
"AIDC (Artificial Intelligence Data Centers) must become export factories that produce intelligence, going beyond being mere data warehouses that store information." (Jung Jae-heon, CEO of SK Telecom)
Jung Jae-heon, Co-Chairman of the AIDC Alliance and CEO of Korea Information Technology Shin Jin-heung-hyeop (Chairman)(SK Telecom), along with Deputy Prime Minister Bae Kyung-hoon, emphasized the importance of public-private cooperation to strengthen AI infrastructure competitiveness at the launch ceremony of the 'AIDC Alliance' held at Lotte Hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul, on the 29th. On this day, the government officially launched the AIDC Alliance alongside the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, the Financial Services Commission, and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, with over 400 participants from academia, industry, and research institutions. The alliance will actively pursue public-private cooperation to build an 18.4-gigawatt (GW) scale AIDC, foster upstream and downstream industries, and drive global industrialization of exports.
The AIDC Alliance is a public-private consultation body established to implement the government's 'National Strategy for Industrialization of AI Data Centers' announced last month. Its goal is to build an AI infrastructure ecosystem by enhancing competitiveness in upstream and downstream industries such as semiconductors, power, cooling, networks, and cloud computing centered on AIDC construction, while creating large-scale clusters and testbeds.
The alliance operates under a co-chairman system led by the Ministry of Science and ICT and private sector representatives. The first private co-chairman is Jung Jae-heon. Major companies in AI, cloud, semiconductors, and power sectors—including Naver Cloud, Samsung SDS (Samsung SDs), SK Telecom, NHN Cloud, LS Electric, LG Uplus, LG Electronics, GS, Kakao, KT, KTNF, and Furiorea AI—as well as institutional investors, are participating. The alliance will focus on policy task identification, regulatory improvements, and ecosystem development through three sub-committees covering demand, supply, and infrastructure, along with a Task Force (TF) for export industrialization.
Co-Chairman Jung stated, "Competition in the AI era is not between individual companies but between nations. The government and industry must move as one team to enhance South Korea's AI competitiveness. We expect the AIDC Alliance to become the focal point of this cooperation."
Deputy Prime Minister Bae remarked, "AIDC is a core infrastructure that determines competitiveness in the AI industry. We will foster both GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) and domestic NPUs (Neural Processing Units), securing full-stack AI competitiveness covering AI infrastructure, models, platforms, and services." He further emphasized, "We will actively support technology development, power and water resource acquisition, and regulatory improvements to enable bold private investments."
Following this, Jang Eun-jeong, Head of the Digital Infrastructure Division at the Korea Information Technology Planning and Evaluation Institute (IITP), announced the alliance's operational plan for the second half of this year, including a roadmap by sub-committee, the launch of an AI Data Center Business Unit next year, and cluster development. At the end of the event, appointments for heads of the demand, supply, and infrastructure sub-committees were held, followed by the AIDC Alliance launch ceremony. Attendees posed for commemorative photos, reaffirming their commitment to the successful industrialization of AI data centers as a national strategy.
in TECH
