South Korea unveils record memory, AI, and robotics investment plan

Category: Markets
Status: developing
Sources: Korea Times, UPI, Rappler, discussion
Summary: President Lee Jae Myung announced three public-private mega-projects on 2026-06-28. Samsung pledged about 1,000 trillion won (roughly 649 billion USD) over ten years; Samsung and SK Hynix together commit about 800 trillion won (roughly 518 billion USD) to build new fabrication sites in the Gwangju and Jeolla southwest region as a second national chip cluster; SK Group, GS Group, and Naver commit about 550 trillion won to AI data centers targeting 8.4 GW of capacity by 2029 and a further 10 GW by 2035; and a humanoid-robot initiative aims to raise South Korea's share of that market from about 1 percent to 20 percent. The figures are announced pledges and vary across outlets; the build-out spans years.
Why it matters: It is the supply-side counterpart to the AI memory crunch driving recent DRAM price increases, with the two dominant memory makers committing record capacity capex amid competition with China's mass-production push.
Follow-up: Watch for fab groundbreaking dates and whether the AI-data-center gigawatt targets convert into committed builds.