Yongin Cluster Investment to Expand to 600 Trillion Won
Responding to HBM Demand... AI Infrastructure Expansion
SK Group will invest 128 trillion won domestically by 2028, focusing on key industries such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence (AI), energy, and bio. The group also plans to gradually expand its workforce from the current annual level of 8,000 employees to as many as 20,000 in the coming years. SK Group aims to maximize the impact of its domestic investments by fostering advanced industrial ecosystems and promoting balanced regional development.
On November 16, following a joint public-private meeting related to the Korea-U.S. tariff negotiations, SK Group announced, "We will faithfully carry out our domestic investment of 128 trillion won by 2028." The group added, "We plan to continue relentless domestic investment and job creation, focusing on our core businesses such as AI, semiconductors, energy, and bio, and to contribute to the development of domestic industries, including the vision of becoming one of the world's top three AI powerhouses."
In particular, the group intends to further strengthen domestic semiconductor investment to respond to the spread of AI and rising memory demand. As part of this effort, the investment scale for the SK hynix semiconductor cluster in Yongin will be expanded beyond initial plans, driven by surging demand for high bandwidth memory (HBM) and the advancement of manufacturing processes.
If all four fabs planned for the Yongin cluster are completed, the total investment is expected to reach 600 trillion won. Even the first fab alone will be a super-large production line equivalent to six M15X lines in Cheongju, and the growing demand for high-performance memory processes due to the expansion of the AI market is cited as the main driver for facility expansion. The group plans to adjust the construction pace of the fabs according to semiconductor demand and market conditions, but will proceed as scheduled with the plan to build all four fabs within the Yongin cluster.
SK hynix is also building the 860 billion won 'Trinity Fab' in partnership with the government to strengthen the domestic competitiveness of materials, parts, and equipment (so-called "Sobu-Jang"). This will be a development and demonstration platform based on 12-inch wafers, operated as a non-profit foundation so that materials, parts, and equipment companies, research institutes, academia, and startups can freely utilize it.
Workforce expansion will also proceed in parallel. Currently, SK Group hires more than 8,000 new employees annually. Within the group, it is estimated that each time a semiconductor fab is completed, at least 2,000 additional staff will be needed. Accordingly, depending on the scale and operating speed of each fab, the direct and indirect employment effect per fab could increase from 14,000 to as many as 20,000 jobs.
AI infrastructure investment is also being expanded regionally. SK Telecom and SK Broadband, in partnership with AWS, are building the 100MW hyperscale 'SKAI Data Center' in Ulsan. When it begins commercial operation in 2027, it is expected to serve as a Northeast Asia AI hub. Separately, SK Group is considering building an AI data center in the southwestern region of the Korean Peninsula in collaboration with OpenAI, and plans to work with domestic and international partners to establish AI infrastructure.
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