Samsung will invest about 1.4 trillion won in a U.S. artificial intelligence infrastructure company to expand its global data center business. The strategy combines the group's capabilities in semiconductors, cooling, construction, operations and batteries with the power infrastructure of its U.S. partners, aiming to resolve the electricity bottleneck seen as the biggest constraint on AI data centers and to take the lead in the global data center market.
Samsung said on the 29th that it had decided to invest a combined $1 billion (about 1.4 trillion won) in Helix Digital Infrastructure, a U.S. AI infrastructure company. Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) will provide $500 million (about 700 billion won), with Samsung C&T (028260.KS), Samsung SDS, Samsung SDI (006400.KS), Samsung Life Insurance (032830.KS) and Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance (000810.KS) supplying the remaining $500 million. Through the deal, Samsung joins Nvidia, U.S. power company Vistra and the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) as a founding investor in Helix.
Helix is an integrated AI infrastructure company established in June this year by U.S. investment firm KKR. It provides the full range of infrastructure needed for AI data centers, from large-scale data center development and operation to power generation and transmission infrastructure, optical communication lines and network infrastructure. Adam Selipsky, former chief executive of Amazon Web Services (AWS), leads Helix, which has recruited executives from the data center and power industries.
Samsung plans to strengthen its leadership in the AI data center market through the investment. The company intends to expand its role in global data center construction projects by combining Helix's integrated solutions with its existing core data center technologies, including semiconductors. With a shortage of power infrastructure emerging as the biggest bottleneck slowing data center expansion, Samsung expects its partnership with Helix to help ease the problem. It also plans to work with Vistra, another Helix investor, to move quickly on securing power sources.
Samsung has been pursuing group-wide synergy in the data center business. Samsung Electronics supplies data center cooling solutions through its subsidiary FläktGroup alongside its semiconductor business. The construction division of Samsung C&T is actively pursuing large-scale infrastructure projects as an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor in data center construction and power generation. Samsung SDS designs, builds and operates data centers and has also taken on the construction of the national AI computing center. Samsung SDI is recognized as having world-class technology in uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) and battery backup units (BBU), which are essential to running data centers that operate high-performance servers around the clock.
"This investment is an opportunity to extend the component competitiveness held by Samsung affiliates into influence at the system and infrastructure level," a Samsung official said. "We will broaden our standing beyond that of a component supplier in the AI ecosystem to become a player that participates directly in building the infrastructure ecosystem."
