KT starts 50MW Ansan AI data center, targeting a 2029 opening

By Marcus Bennett

KT Cloud has begun construction on a 50MW artificial intelligence data center in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. The company targets a 2029 opening for the 36,880-square-meter site, which covers 396,973 square feet. KT Cloud announced the groundbreaking this week.

The announcement referred to the “Ansan area of Seoul” while naming Gyeonggi Province as the location. The building will have nine stories and two basement floors. KT says the project forms part of a plan to offer up to 1GW of AI data center capacity by 2031. Its technical brief focuses on power delivery and cooling for high-density AI servers.

What does the Ansan project change for AI customers?

For now, the project changes KT's capacity pipeline rather than its live service. Ansan remains scheduled to open in 2029. The surrounding program covers Gunsan, Cheongna and Gasan, with the Gasan facility already in service.

Power and cooling set the practical limit on how densely AI servers can operate in a given building. KT says its Ansan design addresses that constraint through infrastructure optimized for high-density servers.

KT Cloud CEO Kim Bong-kyun said:

The Ansan AI Data Center is a project that incorporates next-generation design technology and power and cooling infrastructure optimized for high-density AI servers.

Based on our accumulated experience in data center construction and operation and our proprietary technological capabilities, we will provide stable and efficient AI infrastructure and actively respond to the diverse technological needs of our customers.

The 1GW figure is a ceiling for the portfolio, not the capacity of one site. Ansan accounts for 50MW within that wider target, but the site will not provide live capacity until 2029. For customers, the practical answer is therefore a date, not an immediate service increase: construction has started, while live capacity waits until 2029.

Procurement teams can use KT's existing zones and GPU access for current workloads. They cannot count Ansan as operating capacity yet, because KT has not set an earlier partial-opening date.

The wider build-out

The wider program includes two additional projects with announced schedules and one facility already operating.

• Cheongna, Incheon: KT is developing a 50MW facility with 11 stories. KT plans to start construction in Q4 of this year and complete the facility in Q1 2030.
• Gunsan: KT recently began construction alongside SGC Energy. The site will initially offer 60MW, and KT expects it to open in Q1 2028. KT could later expand it to 300MW.
• Gasan: KT launched the facility in November 2025. The five-story site is a 40MW facility that uses liquid cooling and offers 26MW of IT capacity.

KT reports the Gasan facility at 40MW and its IT capacity at 26MW, while the project schedule places the forthcoming Gunsan site ahead of Ansan and Cheongna. The two Gasan figures cover the facility and its IT load, so buyers should not treat them as interchangeable.

Among the three forthcoming projects, the announced deadlines place Gunsan first, Ansan second and Cheongna last. The announcement does not allocate the full 1GW target among those projects.

KT's operating footprint

KT Corporation, founded in 1981 and formerly known as Korea Telecom, is a major South Korean telecommunications company.

• KT Cloud availability zones: Cheonan twice, Seoul and Gimhae in South Korea; Los Angeles, California, in the United States; and Gimhae in Japan.
• KT IDC facilities: Gangnam, Baekseok, Namguro, Songjeong, Daejeon, Cheonan, Gyeongbuk, Gasan, Yongsan, Mokdong twice and Bundang.

KT Cloud already offers access to AMD's Instinct MI250 GPUs and Nvidia hardware. Customers therefore have an existing cloud and hardware base while the new sites move through construction. For KT, the build-out turns a 1GW goal into a staged program spanning the November 2025 Gasan launch through the planned Q1 2030 completion at Cheongna.