Amazon Web Services (AWS) will invest over $5 billion to build artificial intelligence data centers in South Korea's Incheon and Gyeonggi Province by 2031, as announced during the APEC CEO Summit in Gyeongju. This marks the largest foreign direct investment in South Korean history, surpassing a previous $4 billion commitment from June 2025 for a data hub in Ulsan in partnership with SK Group.
The announcement followed a meeting between AWS CEO Matt Garman and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, who emphasized that the investment supports the country's goal to become a top-three global AI leader. "The key to that growth lies in advanced science and technology, and at the center of that is AI data," Lee stated, highlighting AWS's role in South Korea's economic rebound and long-term sustainability.
Garman revealed that this is part of AWS's broader $40 billion investment across 14 non-U.S. APEC countries from 2025 to 2028, which is expected to generate an additional $45 billion in U.S. GDP. The South Korean projects are projected to create thousands of jobs and stimulate growth in complementary sectors like semiconductors, memory chips, and high-performance computing, leveraging the presence of firms like Samsung Electronics and SK hynix.
This move aligns with increasing AI infrastructure investments in the region, including Meta's $14 billion commitment to AI-native ecosystems and OpenAI's plans for data centers in South Korea. Seven global companies, including AWS, pledged a combined $9 billion in South Korean investments over the next five years during the summit, underscoring the country's strategic importance in the AI and cloud services surge.
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