South Korea unveils a roughly $900B AI and chip plan it calls a survival strategy

South Korea has put a price tag on its AI ambitions, and it is one of the largest national tech commitments on record.

On June 29, 2026, President Lee Jae Myung unveiled a public-private investment plan worth approximately $880–900 billion, or around 1,350 trillion won, to be deployed over the next decade.

Lee described the effort as a “national survival strategy.” He shared the stage with leaders from Samsung and SK Hynix.

Three bets, one decade

The plan rests on three flagship projects: memory chips, AI data centers, and physical AI and robotics.

Samsung and SK Hynix are committing approximately $518 billion, or 800 trillion won, to build new memory fabrication plants in the Gwangju region.

An additional approximately $52 billion is set aside for an HBM packaging hub. HBM stands for high-bandwidth memory, a design that stacks memory chips so they can feed data to AI processors quickly.

The second project is AI data centers. The plan calls for approximately $356 billion, or 550 trillion won, with a target of 8.4 GW of capacity by 2029.

SK Group, GS Group and Naver are backing the data center buildout. The longer-range goal is more than 18 GW of AI data center capacity by 2035.

Seoul wants South Korea to rank among the top 3 global AI robot powers by 2030. It also plans to train 10,000 specialists in physical AI by the same year.

Superintelligence, in name more than in practice

The investment centers on computing power and semiconductor manufacturing, not on standalone ASI projects. The physical assets are concrete, while the superintelligence framing is aspirational.

Why Samsung and SK sit at the center

South Korea’s strategy leans on companies that already dominate parts of the memory market. Samsung, led by Jay Y. Lee, and SK, led by Chey Tae-won, are the key corporate figures attached to the plan.

The structure is a public-private partnership rather than a pure government spending bill. The state sets the direction and the targets, while corporate balance sheets supply much of the capital.

What this means

The HBM packaging hub deserves particular attention. High-bandwidth memory sits at the core of modern AI hardware, so a dedicated hub signals that Seoul wants to own more of the value chain, not just the raw memory chips.

Moving to 8.4 GW by 2029 and beyond 18 GW by 2035 implies a major expansion in electricity supply, and the plan’s credibility will partly depend on whether the power can be delivered on schedule.

The talent target may prove a quiet bottleneck. Fabs, data centers and robots all need skilled people, and 10,000 physical AI specialists by 2030 is a measurable milestone worth tracking.

The milestones to watch are groundbreaking progress on the Gwangju fabs, the 2029 data center capacity mark and the 2030 robotics and training goals.