Korea just landed a heavyweight partnership in the global AI infrastructure race. DigitalBridge, the US-based digital-infrastructure investor managing a hefty $108 billion worldwide, has signed an MOU with telecom giant KT to explore building next-generation, AI-powered data centers across the country.
It’s the firm’s first major collaboration with a Korean telco—and it comes at a moment when the world’s largest cloud and AI operators are scrambling for land, power, and partners in Asia-Pacific.
If the two companies move from MOU to execution, they’ll be targeting AI-factory–style hyperscale campuses that could eventually scale to gigawatt-level facilities—the kind of nuclear-reactor-sized power draws we’re now seeing in the US and Europe. Think multi-billion-dollar investments, extreme-density cooling, and facilities built specifically for generative AI, LLM training, and cloud-scale GPU clusters.
And yes—Korea wants to be next on the map.
Why This Partnership Matters: Korea’s Bid for APAC AI Dominance
Korea has long punched above its weight in connectivity and semiconductor prowess. Now it’s emerging as one of Asia’s most attractive markets for AI infrastructure—thanks to abundant subsea cable connectivity, strong domestic demand, political alignment around digital transformation, and a rapidly maturing ecosystem of GPU-ready data centers.
Marc Ganzi, CEO of DigitalBridge, made it clear:
Korea is “rapidly emerging as a central hub for AI infrastructure in Asia.”
While countries like Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia have captured the lion’s share of AI data center headlines over the past two years, Korea has been quietly closing the gap. KT, meanwhile, has been overhauling its nationwide data center operations to support dense GPU clusters, eco-friendly power systems, and global-hyperscaler partnerships.
The DigitalBridge-KT pairing brings together global capital and local operational depth—exactly the combination required to build gigawatt-class AI campuses in regions navigating permitting, power constraints, and political scrutiny around data-sovereignty.
DigitalBridge Pushes Hard Into Asia—Right After a Huge Fund Close
This partnership lands just after DigitalBridge closed its $11.7 billion DBP III fund, with Asia—particularly South Korea—called out as a priority for capital deployment.
DigitalBridge is on a building spree:
- North America: Over $40 billion in infrastructure development, including massive hyperscale campuses in Wisconsin and Texas in collaboration with top-tier tech platforms.
- Asia-Pacific: $1.6 billion recently secured to expand operations, including a 300MW+ hyperscale development in Johor, Malaysia. Regional footprint: now pushing 1GW across Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Hong Kong.
Add Korea to that map, and the firm completes one of the broadest APAC hyperscale networks outside the hyperscalers themselves.
This isn’t just expansion—it’s an arms race to build the physical substrate of AI before the GPU giants, cloud providers, and LLM builders outstrip the grid.
Why Asia-Pacific—and Why Korea Is Suddenly Hot
APAC has become the world’s fastest-growing region for cloud and AI data center investment. Three big factors drive that trajectory:
1. Power availability—and the ability to build new generation.
Singapore is still power-constrained. Japan is expensive. Malaysia, Australia, and Taiwan are booming. Korea, meanwhile, is quietly opening doors for AI-era builds, especially as local demand surges.
2. Explosive growth in regional data demand.
As generative AI use cases proliferate across finance, gaming, telecom, manufacturing, and government, domestic infrastructure becomes a sovereign priority.
3. Policy alignment, especially post-APEC 2025.
The APEC Summit heavily emphasized multilateral cooperation for resilient, sustainable AI infrastructure. Korea is positioning itself as a responsible, energy-forward AI hub.
In short: Korea has grid, tech talent, and the political green light—all things hyperscalers love.
KT’s Role: A Telecom Veteran Goes Full AI-Native
KT is already knee-deep in AI transformation. The company has been revamping its national data center footprint, focusing heavily on:
- High-performance GPU clusters for enterprise and cloud AI
- Energy-efficient infrastructure with sustainability commitments
- Partnerships with global technology players to expand capacity and market reach
- Upgrades to its deep fiber and network backbone for AI workloads
Woojin Jung, who heads KT’s Strategy and Business Consulting Group, stated that the company is looking at multiple strategies to build resilient and efficient AI capacity—something every telco and cloud provider is battling as compute demand skyrockets.
That makes KT a logical partner for DigitalBridge: global capital and hyperscale experience paired with local networks, customer bases, and regulatory familiarity.
The Shift Toward “AI Factories”
One of the more notable elements of the MOU is the focus on AI factory–type data centers—a phrase gaining traction over the last year.
So what is an AI factory?
Think of the traditional data center as a warehouse for compute.
An AI factory is a manufacturing plant for intelligence—designed specifically for:
- Massive GPU clusters
- High-density liquid cooling
- Petabit-scale network fabrics
- Huge power envelopes
- Training and inference workloads simultaneously
These are not “just large data centers.” They’re specialized supercomputing campuses consuming hundreds of megawatts each, with thermal and operational profiles that make cloud regions look quaint.
Nvidia, AWS, Microsoft, Google, and a range of sovereign AI programs are pushing this design philosophy. DigitalBridge is betting this is the long-term future of AI infrastructure—and Korea wants to be early.
How This Positions Korea in the Regional Rivalry
Korea isn’t competing with small players. The APAC AI infrastructure race is heating up with:
- Malaysia: Currently the fastest-growing hyperscale destination globally
- Japan: A stable, high-value market, but land and power are expensive
- Taiwan: Strategic but geopolitically complex
- Singapore: Still the region’s crown jewel but power-constrained
- Australia: Growing fast, especially in AI training clusters
Korea’s advantage lies in its:
- powerful network backbone
- central geographic role between Japan and China
- strong domestic cloud, AI, and enterprise demand
- supportive policy environment
- large-scale grid capacity relative to its neighbors
With DigitalBridge stepping in, it signals international confirmation that Korea is ready for hyperscale AI development at global standards.
Expect more partnerships to follow.
The Bottom Line
DigitalBridge and KT’s agreement isn’t just another “strategic collaboration” announcement—it’s a signal flare for where AI infrastructure investment is heading next. AI isn’t slowing down; if anything, the GPU supply chain and hyperscaler expansion roadmap suggest massively increasing compute footprints.
With this MOU, Korea stakes a claim as a next-generation AI hub in Asia, and DigitalBridge continues its aggressive global sprint to build the data centers that will power AI for the next decade.
The partnership is still early-stage, but the intent is clear: go big, build fast, and turn Korea into a core AI corridor for the region.
