“AI Data Centers (DCs) are important businesses for the next generation.”
LG Uplus CEO Hong Bum-Sik met with Korean reporters in Silicon Valley on the 19th (local time) and showed a strong commitment to the AI data center industry. CEO Hon said, “If you don’t invest in an AI data center, your grandchild can ask you, “Grandpa, what did you do then?” “Profits are important, but what role they need to play in competition between countries is important, and I think that’s the customer’s point of view.”
LG U+ is promoting the construction of an AI data center in Paju in 2027. PajuAidc is the largest data center in a metropolitan area, built in an area nine times the size of a soccer field.
During a business trip to the US, Hong attended Nvidia’s annual conference, GTC 2025, and held a meeting with partner Google.
CEO Hon explains the difficulty of investing in AIDC, adding, “The GPU cloud is important, but the problem is that semiconductor technology is too fast and developed,” he said, “If you buy a very expensive GPU right now and install it in your data center, a better performance GPU will be cheaper in a year or two.”
“If we don’t do that, we may be unable to study AI because there are no GPU semiconductors in Korea,” he said. “I’m wondering if we see this as an investment or if we need to consider short-term profitability.”
Ultimately, sites and electricity are the most important part of the data center business, but not easy in Korea, CEO Hong said. “This site must be approved by the government and electricity supply must be taken into consideration.”
CEO Hong has announced plans to promote the overseas expansion of Google and its AI agent IXI-O.
“Google once again shows a lot of interest in EXO, and its customers seem to feel a lot of value,” he said. “We asked to launch it in the global market as soon as possible. Global expansion will be possible through the SARS (Software-as-a-Service) model.”
CEO Hong said he wanted LG U+ to become a “young company” that continues to change the world. “Companies fail faster than the world’s changes and fail with the latest,” he said. “If we are a little slower than the pace of the world (change), a crisis can come. Speed is important, he emphasized.
“There is a generational difference between businesses and people,” he said. “We are a (old) company in our 50s, but we want to be the youngest company in our 50s and a company where people in their 30s can work with.
“As the age of AI, the pace of growth for startups has accelerated,” he said. “What previously took 10 years is that there are now $1 billion worth of companies in a year or two.”
In an era of rapid startup change and rapid growth, collaboration with startups should be considered important.
CEO Hong regretted that Korean companies were not very present in GTC2025. During the keynote speech (by CEO Jensen Hwang), three Korean companies, including Samsung, were briefly mentioned, with most of the other suppliers being large US companies, startups, Taiwanese and Japanese companies. “There are only a few Korean companies in the world’s leading AI companies, so we thought up ways to overcome this personally and nationally.”
Hong was the Monitor Group Partner and Head of SK Telecom’s new Business Development Group, and in 2011 he served as Head of Bain & Company Technology Division and Head of Bain & Company Korea.
(Silicon Valley-Lee Dekuju correspondent)
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