SK Telecom establishes AI data centers in Vietnam to accelerate expansion into the Southeast Asian market

SK Telecom is leveraging its experience in operating artificial intelligence data centers accumulated within South Korea to accelerate its expansion into Southeast Asia, starting with Vietnam. Its concept is to lead with an integrated communication network business model that combines power infrastructure with AI services, ensuring local presence.

According to industry sources, on the 23rd local time, SK Telecom, together with SK Innovation, signed a business agreement with the Yên An Province government and the National Innovation Center in Vietnam during the Korea-Vietnam Business Forum held in Hanoi, Vietnam, regarding the construction of an AI data center and the development of related ecosystems. The project will be linked with SK Innovation’s ongoing Qiong La Pu liquefied natural gas power generation project. The approach involves building power generation facilities such as a 1.5-gigawatt gas combined cycle power plant to stabilize power supply, and establishing data centers based on this infrastructure locally. Power is a core factor determining the profitability and stability of data centers, so bundling power generation infrastructure with data centers is seen as a differentiated advantage in the Southeast Asian market.

SK Telecom is expanding the scope of this cooperation from mere facility construction to jointly cultivating the AI industry foundation with the local government. This also explains why its collaboration with the National Innovation Center in Vietnam is expanding to policy formulation, partner discovery, and industry ecosystem development. SK Telecom President and CEO Jeong Tae-wook defines AI data centers as core infrastructure for industry growth and states that, based on the company’s construction and operation capabilities, it will concretize cooperation models that suit local conditions.

This overseas expansion is an extension of the AI infrastructure foundation already established domestically. SK Telecom has commercialized GPU-as-a-Service at the Gasan Data Center, which offers on-demand GPU computing resources, and has built a sovereign GPU cluster called “HAEIN” equipped with NVIDIA B200, dedicated to enhancing domestic AI computing power. Currently, Ulsan is constructing a large-scale, 100-megawatt AI-specific data center, planning to cooperate with Amazon Web Services to utilize group-owned power generation equipment for electricity procurement, and applying high-efficiency cooling systems. Additionally, efforts are underway to jointly build an AI data center in the Southwest region with OpenAI, accelerating the formation of a so-called “data center belt” connecting the capital region, Lingnan, and Hunan.

However, the actual success or failure of overseas operations still requires further observation. The Vietnam project is currently in the business agreement stage, with specific investment scales or revenue structures not yet disclosed. Especially for data centers integrated with power infrastructure, initial investments are substantial, and whether sufficient demand can be secured locally, as well as whether regulatory issues related to power, communication, and land can be smoothly resolved, will determine its commercial viability. Moreover, global tech giants are actively investing in the Southeast Asian data center market, adding pressure. Nonetheless, SK Telecom will continue to leverage nationwide communication infrastructure to realize edge AI and AI-based intelligent communication networks as its core competitive advantages as a telecom operator. This move may serve as a benchmark for assessing the potential expansion into neighboring countries such as Malaysia and Singapore, depending on the progress of the Vietnam project.