South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT on Sunday finalised the Samsung SDS consortium as the private participant in a national artificial intelligence (AI) computing centre construction project.

The consortium consists of Samsung SDS, Naver Cloud, Samsung C&T, Kakao, Samsung Electronics, Clush, KT, South Jeolla Province and Seonamhaean Enterprise City Development.

The ministry on Sunday signed an implementation agreement to finalise the operator and business plan, and a shareholder agreement to establish and operate an investment vehicle and special purpose company (SPC). The parties to the shareholder agreement are the ministry, the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA) and the Samsung SDS consortium.

Funding was set at a total of 400 billion won, combining 116 billion won in public funding and 284 billion won in private funding. It was 마련됐다 after the National Growth Fund's fund management review committee and others approved SPC equity investment on April 30.

The ministry and the Samsung SDS consortium plan to establish a public-private SPC within the second quarter this year and begin construction in the third quarter. They will then raise additional funds through the SPC to build the centre with a total 규모 of 2.5 trillion won. The target is 15,000 advanced AI semiconductors by 2028.

Once completed, the centre will provide additional fee discounts and vouchers to small and medium-sized companies, startups, academia and the research community. It also plans to run technology consulting, commercialisation support and education. To boost the use of domestically made AI semiconductors, it will provide design, prototype development and verification environments in an R&D zone, and introduce domestically made AI semiconductors verified in an NPU zone into actual commercial services.

Science and ICT Minister Bae Kyung-hoon (배경훈), who also serves as deputy prime minister, said the national AI computing centre would be a model case for public-private joint investment and would help spur full-scale private investment in AI infrastructure. He said the government would actively support South Korea's growth into an Asian AI infrastructure hub.