South Korea Distributed Edge Cloud Market

In June 2025, SK Group, which encompasses SK Telecom, SK Broadband, SK hynix, and affiliated affiliates, agreed to construct a hyperscale AWS AI Zone data center in Ulsan under a 15-year strategic agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS). The facility, which is scheduled to commence operations in 2027, is a component of SK's "AI Infrastructure Superhighway" strategy. It is intended to provide cloud services that are specifically tailored to the AI requirements of local enterprises, as well as GPU-accelerated processing and periphery computing.SK Telecom announced partnerships with Elice Group, Giga Computing, and Schneider Electric in March 2025 to develop modular and liquid-cooled AI data center infrastructure for peripheral deployments. The project involves the creation of sophisticated cooling systems and container-based "AI Portable Modular Data Center" units with the objective of enhancing energy efficiency and deployment flexibility.Naver Cloud and Intel engaged in a technology collaboration in April 2025 to establish a joint research facility known as Naver Cloud Intel Co-Lab (NICL). Using Intel's Gaudi accelerators, the initiative seeks to establish an AI chip ecosystem in South Korea that supports entrepreneurs and universities that are developing HyperCLOVA X-based cloud and peripheral AI applications.Naver Cloud and Nvidia announced a sovereign AI partnership at GTC 2025 in March 2025 to provide HyperCLOVA X-powered LLMs that are optimized for East Asian languages. The objective of this alliance is to provide localized infrastructure and compliance to edge-based AI services.