South Korea is mobilizing one of the largest industrial bets in its history to capture surging global demand for artificial intelligence, with semiconductor giants Samsung and SK Hynix at the center of the plan.
The figures vary by source, reflecting how the package is counted. Bloomberg framed it as an $880 billion commitment to AI chips and data centers. ABC News and Decrypt reported a $518 billion chipmaking hub, while Tom's Hardware described an 800 trillion won (about $520 billion) public-private plan unveiled by President Lee for four new Samsung and SK Hynix fabs plus high-bandwidth memory (HBM) facilities. The South China Morning Post put the megaproject at $576 billion, and Yahoo Finance reported investment approaching $1.2 trillion across chips and AI data centers. The Korea Herald cited a 900 trillion won push.
Whatever the exact accounting, the scale is striking. Tom's Hardware noted the chip portion alone dwarfs the U.S. CHIPS Act roughly tenfold. The Malay Mail characterized the moment as a "one-time opportunity" for South Korea to turn AI demand into a broader industrial leap, backed by strong government support.
The strategy leans on the country's existing strength in memory chips — especially HBM, the specialized memory that AI accelerators depend on — while adding domestic data-center capacity to serve soaring demand. New fabrication plants, or "fabs," would expand manufacturing capacity for years to come.
Why it matters: AI's growth hinges on who can build the chips and infrastructure to power it, and South Korea is staking enormous public and private resources on being indispensable to that supply chain.