The first co-investment fund between the two institutions since 2006 will target data centers and green energy infrastructure as South Korea pushes to build regional AI clusters beyond Seoul.
Korea Post and the Korea Development Bank are setting up a 1 trillion won fund, about $701.7 million, to finance AI infrastructure in South Korea, reviving their co-investment partnership for the first time since 2006. The initiative is designed to support large-scale projects including next-generation data centers and green energy infrastructure, with a focus on building a national AI ecosystem and backing government priorities such as the Three Major Megaprojects and the Honam region project. The plan centers on integrated AI clusters that connect power grids with large data centers in non-metropolitan areas, especially Honam, where renewable energy potential is seen as strong. The push aims to ease the concentration of data centers in the Seoul metropolitan area, create regional jobs, strengthen national AI competitiveness and support more balanced regional development. Officials framed the fund as a policy-financing response to a global AI race increasingly shaped by infrastructure, especially as rising data center electricity demand makes stable power supply and green energy more important.