South Korean President Lee Jae-mang has announced a plan to develop the country’s semiconductor manufacturing sector and expand its artificial intelligence infrastructure through large-scale investment.
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix will each build two chip manufacturing plants in the south-west of the country as part of a national project to create a semiconductor industry ecosystem worth a total of 800 trillion won ($518 billion), the government said. Regional authorities will invest between 5 and 20 trillion won in these projects, the president said.
Samsung and SK Group will allocate 81 trillion won to the creation of a chip packaging cluster near Seoul.
SK Group also intends to invest 1 trillion won in the construction of data centres and 1.1 trillion won in semiconductor facilities. The company did not specify the planned timelines for these investments.
In addition, SK Group, GS Group and Naver Corp. will allocate 550 trillion won to the construction of data centre facilities with a total capacity of 8.4 GW in the coming years as part of the plan announced by the authorities.
South Korea aims to increase data centre capacity to 18.4 GW by 2035 and plans to invest $19.4 billion in expanding production capacity for next-generation memory chips over the next 15 years.
Shares in Samsung Electronics fell by 4.8% at the close of trading in Seoul on Monday, whilst SK Hynix shares fell by 1.7% and Naver Corp. shares rose by 3.9%.