The Samsung SDS consortium visited the site of the National AI Computing Center in Haenam, South Jeolla, in its first official external schedule since joining the tender for the project.

The National AI Computing Center, which will require total project costs of more than 2 trillion won including private and public investment and policy finance loans, will provide high-performance computing resources such as GPUs to companies, universities and research institutions for developing hyperscale AI models and processing large amounts of data.

The National AI Computing Center, part of the government’s plan to build an “AI highway,” aims to secure more than 15,000 advanced GPUs by 2028 and continue expanding through 2030.

After joining the National AI Computing Center build-out project alone in October last year, the Samsung SDS consortium formed a task force to establish a special purpose company and has prepared for setting up the entity, designing the data center including permits, and business planning including establishing a business model.

For the visit, 30 officials from consortium participants including Samsung SDS, Naver Cloud and the local government of South Jeolla Province went to Solaseado, selected as the site for the National AI Computing Center. They toured the planned location for building the data center, checked the results of a ground survey and comprehensively reviewed surrounding infrastructure conditions such as power and communications. The project passed technical and policy evaluation in November last year, and financial review is under way.

The Samsung SDS consortium plans to move into procedures to establish the special purpose company after financial review and the selection of a preferred bidder are completed promptly, following an implementation agreement.

A Samsung SDS consortium official said the site visit was to reaffirm the consortium’s resolve to build the National AI Computing Center quickly and without disruption and to proactively check on-site conditions ahead of moving the project forward. The official said the consortium would pool the capabilities of participating companies to successfully 추진 the project so the center can become a foundation for South Korea’s AI research and industrial ecosystem to make a global leap.