Pranav Hotkar
Singapore - June 9, 2026 - Keppel has entered South Korea’s rapidly expanding data center market through a new greenfield development project in Ansan, strengthening its position in one of Asia’s fastest-growing AI infrastructure regions.
The company stated that Keppel Data Centre Fund III has secured land for the development of a 60 MW hyperscale-ready data center campus in Ansan, situated within the Greater Seoul metropolitan region. The facility is expected to be operational by 2030 and will be designed to support AI, hyperscale cloud, and high-density compute workloads.
Keppel will hold an effective 73% stake in the project through its data center fund platform. The company stated that the investment marks its first entry into South Korea’s data center sector, a market experiencing accelerating demand driven by the adoption of AI, cloud expansion, and digital transformation initiatives.
“South Korea is a strategically important digital infrastructure market with strong long-term growth potential,” Keppel said in the announcement, adding that the project will leverage the company’s existing expertise in developing and operating hyperscale infrastructure across Asia-Pacific and Europe.
The development comes amid a broader surge in AI infrastructure investment across South Korea. NVIDIA recently announced multiple partnerships involving SK Telecom, SK hynix, Hyundai, LG, and other Korean technology groups as demand for sovereign AI infrastructure and AI factories accelerates nationwide.
Industry analysts increasingly view South Korea as one of Asia’s most important emerging AI infrastructure markets because of its advanced semiconductor ecosystem, strong connectivity, and high concentration of enterprise technology demand. According to market estimates, South Korea’s colocation market is projected to grow from approximately USD 1.95 billion in 2025 to more than USD 4.2 billion by 2030, fueled largely by AI and GPU-intensive workloads.
Keppel said the Ansan campus will focus on delivering scalable and AI-ready infrastructure capable of supporting next-generation compute requirements. AI data centers are increasingly requiring higher rack densities, advanced cooling systems, and significantly larger power allocations compared with traditional cloud facilities.
The South Korean expansion also aligns with Keppel’s broader digital infrastructure strategy. The company has been actively expanding its data center portfolio across Asia-Pacific, including a floating data center project in Singapore and multiple AI-focused infrastructure initiatives.
Industry-wide, operators are aggressively pursuing new AI-ready capacity as hyperscalers and enterprises scale GPU clusters to support generative AI, autonomous systems, and large-scale inference workloads. Access to power, connectivity, and land has become increasingly competitive across major Asian markets.
For Keppel, the Ansan project provides a foothold in a strategically important market as South Korea intensifies efforts to strengthen its AI and digital infrastructure ecosystem. The development further highlights how global infrastructure investors are expanding into new regional markets to capture rising demand for hyperscale and AI-focused data center capacity.
