Amazon Bets Big On South Korea With $5B AWS Data Center Plan Amid Trump’s Asian Tour
- Amazon’s commitment comes after AWS chief Matt Garman’s meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung.
- The deal underscores how American AI companies are turning to Asia to set up new data centers.
- The investment news comes a day after the e-commerce and tech giant announced a major layoff.
Amazon Web Services has pledged to invest $5 billion through 2031 to build new data centers in South Korea, the country’s presidential office said in a statement on Wednesday, the latest such investment in Asia aimed at expanding cloud capacity.
The announcement follows a meeting between President Lee Jae Myung and leaders of cloud companies, including Amazon Web Services chief Matt Garman. Amazon is one of seven global firms whose executives attended the group meeting with Lee in Gyeongju, South Korea, and pledged a total of $9 billion in investments for the next five years, the presidential office said.
The news comes amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s arrival in South Korea on Wednesday as part of his Asia tour, where he told an audience at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation that the two countries would strike a trade deal soon. He is also meeting with Lee to discuss trade, investment, and peace on the Korean peninsula, the South Korean leader’s office said.
To be sure, Amazon announced in June a $4 billion investment in the country, jointly with SK Group. That would create the country’s largest data center, located in the southeastern city of Ulsan.
In recent months, Amazon has also pledged similar investments in Japan, Australia, and Singapore.
“At AWS, we’ve invested and committed to investment of an additional $40 billion across 14 non-U.S. APEC countries and economies between now and 2028,” Garman said.
The move underscores how American AI companies are building out new data center assets in Asia, a region where Internet users and services are growing faster than in the West.
Earlier this month, OpenAI formed joint ventures with Samsung and SK to build two data centers in the country. Meanwhile, Amazon and Alphabet have announced major data center projects in India.
Last week, a major outage at AWS disrupted hundreds of businesses and online services for a day. Investors are prepping for Amazon’s quarterly report on Thursday, which will provide details on the incident and a picture of the overall business.
Amazon on Tuesday said it would lay off 14,000 workers globally in a major shakeup driven in part by the adoption of artificial intelligence at the tech giant.
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