- Amazon Web Services will invest $5 billion in new data centers in South Korea by 2031.
- The pledge was made following a meeting between AWS executives and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung.
- Leading American technology firms are expanding infrastructure in Asia to meet regional growth in cloud and AI demand.
- The announcement comes one day after Amazon revealed major global layoffs affecting around 14,000 workers.
- Amazon has announced similar investments in Japan, Australia, Singapore, and joint data center projects in India.
Amazon Web Services committed to invest $5 billion through 2031 to develop new data centers in South Korea. The announcement was made by the South Korean presidential office after a recent meeting between President Lee Jae Myung and executives from major cloud companies.
The investment is part of a larger group commitment, as Amazon was one of seven global technology firms that together pledged $9 billion for business expansions in South Korea over the next five years. AWS chief Matt Garman attended the meeting in Gyeongju and confirmed the company’s commitment to expanding its regional cloud capacity.
Garman stated, “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.” In June, Amazon also announced a $4 billion joint investment with SK Group to build South Korea’s largest data center in Ulsan.
The latest pledge comes as American technology companies increase their presence in Asia to support accelerating demand for digital services. Earlier in the month, OpenAI formed ventures with Samsung and SK to build two data centers in South Korea. Amazon and Alphabet have also announced major data center expansion projects in India.
The investment news follows a significant workforce reduction at Amazon, where 14,000 employees were laid off globally, partly due to the growing adoption of Artificial Intelligence within the company. Last week, a major AWS outage affected hundreds of clients and services, just days before Amazon is scheduled to release its quarterly business report.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) region continues to see rapid growth in internet users and service demand, driving infrastructure investments by leading global companies.
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