Dongwon Group said that construction began on the 26th for the Pangyo research building of the "KAIST Kim Jae-chul AI Graduate School." The KAIST Kim Jae-chul AI Graduate School's Pangyo research building is an artificial intelligence (AI) graduate school that KAIST is building in Pangyo-dong, Bundang-gu, Seongnam, with a total budget of 54.2 billion won.
All of the project costs needed to build the graduate school came from grants of personal funds by Honorary Chairman Kim Jae-chul, founder of Dongwon Group and Korea Investment Holdings. Since 2020, Kim has donated a cumulative 60.3 billion won to KAIST.
Scheduled for completion in Feb. 2028, the KAIST Kim Jae-chul AI Graduate School will have a total floor area of 18,185 square meters on a 6,000-square-meter site, and Seongnam city provided the land for the graduate school rent-free. The graduate school will have one basement level and eight above-ground floors, with AI convergence research labs and lecture rooms. It will also include a 10 MW-class urban AI data center and plans to equip robot laboratories to research ▲ physical AI ▲ humanoids, and more.
Each floor will also have space to research a variety of projects, including scientific AI such as weather forecasting and new drug development, healthcare AI, and manufacturing AI. In addition, an AI exhibition hall capturing the history of AI and gallery/cinema spaces are planned to lower the barrier to entry for new technologies and to strengthen public consensus.
Kim said, "A Republic of Korea that built its industries on the blue sea will, going forward, find new possibilities in the sea of data," adding, "I hope the AI graduate school will not be just a physical space but a cradle for nurturing AI talent that will lead the world, and a starting point."