AWS to invest $5bn in South Korea by 2031 for AI data centres

AWS CEO Matt Garman made the announcement during a meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung while they were attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

The investment aims to accelerate the growth of an ecosystem for the AI industry in South Korea, with AWS planning to build new data centres on the edge of Seoul.

“Korea is emerging as the epicentre of innovation. At AWS, we’ve invested and committed to investment of an additional $40 billion across 14 non-US APEC countries and economies between now and 2028,” Garman said. “That $40 billion actually drives an additional $45 billion in US GDP and downstream benefit, benefiting all of the APEC economy.”

The cloud leader has been one of the largest AI infrastructure investors, having revealed plans in June to invest $4 billion to build South Korea’s largest data centre – alongside other investments in Japan, Australia and Singapore.

South Korea’s presidential office has also said OpenAI is setting up joint ventures with Samsung and SK Group to build two data centres with an initial capacity of 20MW. Seoul in particular has a broader strategy to attract high-tech manufacturing and digital infrastructure to get a better vantage point in the AI and semiconductor boom.

Speaking on the investment, President Lee said: “This partnership will accelerate Korea’s AI ecosystem and strengthen our bridge to global prosperity.

“We hope a vision of AI for all will become APEC’s new normal.”

This could be AWS’s latest bid to remain competitive against industry rivals Google and Oracle. Just yesterday, it was announced that Amazon is cutting 14,000 job roles – with CEO Andy Jassy confirming that AI systems would likely reduce the need for some corporate jobs.

The company will also be eager to be a figurehead in AI data centre investment – as Morgan Stanley estimates that roughly $3 trillion will be spent on data centres that support AI between now and 2029.

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