A forecast said Korea's limited power supply, lack of sites and other physical infrastructure constraints will curb the growth of artificial intelligence (AI).
Equinix, a global digital infrastructure corporations, stated accordingly on the 16th in its outlook for the "six digital infrastructure trends for 2026" that will shape Korea's AI adoption and technology strategy. Equinix said, "Korea, one of the fastest countries in the world in adopting AI, faces a range of challenges, including rising demand for graphics processing units (GPUs), power and site constraints in the greater Seoul area, and tighter Data Sovereignty regulations."
In Korea, demand for GPUs is surging across hyperscalers and AI startups, boosted by the government's plan to procure 260,000 Nvidia GPUs. Equinix noted, "However, the buildout of AI infrastructure is being delayed by practical constraints such as limited power supply in the greater Seoul area, density limits, permitting complexity, and a shortage of sites."
It also added that, due to regulations such as the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), MyData, and the Cloud Security Assurance Program (CSAP), Korea is considered one of the markets with particularly high sensitivity to sovereignty worldwide. Equinix said, "Regulations on medical and life sciences data and national efforts to develop a Korea-style large language model (LLM) are accelerating demand for domestic AI training and inference."
Furthermore, it predicted that, after large-scale outages worldwide, user expectations for always-on digital services will rise next year. Industries such as subscription video on demand (OTT), gaming, Fintech, and e-commerce require low-latency environments, multicloud support, and neutral interconnection, but the analysis is that existing infrastructure alone will struggle to meet these needs. With regulators also tightening oversight of service quality, Equinix assessed that corporations should craft infrastructure strategies with higher levels of redundancy and operational resilience.
It also assessed that Korea, strong in manufacturing, has entered a new inflection point through AI-based value creation. Equinix explained, "As manufacturing corporations work to protect sensitive intellectual property while connecting to the global AI ecosystem, hybrid AI architectures that combine on-premises, cloud, and colocation environments have emerged as essential."