SK chairman says Ulsan AI data center expansion nearing 900 megawatts

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won said Friday that the planned expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) data center in Ulsan was nearing 900 megawatts, with talks with global technology companies making rapid progress as the group seeks to turn the industrial city into a hub for manufacturing AI. “Ulsan has almost come all the way to 900 megawatts,” Chey told reporters at the 2026 Ulsan Forum in the city. “I think we will be able to announce it soon.” The group’s telecommunications arm, SK Telecom, is building the AI data center in Ulsan in partnership with Amazon Web Services. The project was initially launched as a 100-megawatt facility and is scheduled to begin operations in the second half of next year. SK Telecom said in July that it planned to expand the Ulsan site to 1 gigawatt and develop more than 2 gigawatts of AI data center capacity across South and North Gyeongsang provinces. The Ulsan project, which SK has said will require about 7 trillion won ($5.2 billion) in investment, is the starting point for SK Telecom’s broader plan to build up to 15 gigawatts of AI d