SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korea has agreed to work with the United Arab Emirates on the U.S.-backed Stargate project to build a massive new artificial intelligence data campus in the Gulf country, Seoul said on Tuesday.
The deal was announced when South Korean President Lee Jae Myung was visiting the UAE for a summit.
South Korea, home to Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, aims to become a regional AI hub after President Lee, who took office on June 4, prioritised AI investment to spur growth at a time when U.S. tariffs have clouded the broader economic outlook.
Under a strategic framework agreement signed on Tuesday, the two countries will deepen cooperation in the field of AI, including AI investment and infrastructure, AI supply chains and AI research and development.
Stargate UAE is part of a deal brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump to build the world’s largest set of AI data centres outside the United States, despite previous U.S. restrictions on sending advanced technology to the UAE because of its close ties to China.
The first phase of that project will be the 1-gigawatt Stargate UAE project, built by state-backed UAE firm G42 in partnership with U.S. firms OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia and Cisco Systems, as well as Japan’s SoftBank Group.
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix in October signed initial agreements to supply memory chips for OpenAI’s Stargate data centers.
(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Conor Humphries)
