Samsung will invest about 1.4 trillion won in a U.S. artificial intelligence data center company. The move is designed to strengthen global cooperation with major data center players, including existing investor Nvidia, while pulling together group-wide capabilities in semiconductors, cooling, batteries and construction to secure a leading position in the AI data center market.
Samsung said on the 29th that it will invest a combined $1 billion, or about 1.4 trillion won, in Helix Digital Infrastructure, a U.S. AI infrastructure company. Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) will provide $500 million, or about 700 billion won, while five affiliates — Samsung C&T (028260.KS), Samsung SDS, Samsung SDI, Samsung Life Insurance and Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance — will supply the remaining $500 million. Samsung will join as a founding investor in Helix alongside U.S. investment firm KKR, Nvidia, local power company Vistra and the Kuwait Investment Authority, and plans to take a leading role in the global partnership.
Helix, established by KKR in June this year, is a comprehensive data center solutions company and a kind of data center business platform launched to maximize synergies among global partners. It provides an integrated package of infrastructure needed for AI data center projects, spanning large-scale development and operation, power generation and transmission and distribution, and optical and network systems.
With shortages of power infrastructure emerging as the biggest bottleneck slowing data center expansion, Helix plans to address the problem by securing priority access to power sources through Vistra. Nvidia will also supply its DSX AI Factory, a data center solution built around its graphics processing units, to improve power efficiency and lower operating costs.
Helix had secured commitments of more than $10 billion, or about 13.6 trillion won, from these investors, and Samsung's participation pushes total pledged investment above $11 billion, or about 14.9 trillion won. The company also brought in Adam Selipsky, former CEO of Amazon Web Services, the world's largest cloud service provider, as its chief executive, adding management expertise.
With the new investment accounting for roughly 10% of all funds raised by Helix, Samsung has secured a leading role in the global partnership. The company plans to use the opportunity to combine its existing core data center technologies, including semiconductors, with the capabilities of Helix and other investors, expanding its role in future data center construction projects for big tech firms. Samsung expects the arrangement to boost sales of chips such as high-bandwidth memory, a core data center component, and to complement power infrastructure capabilities it has yet to fully develop.
Samsung is pursuing group-wide synergies in the data center business. Samsung Electronics, which led the investment, is expanding production capacity for advanced memory used in AI accelerators through semiconductor cluster investments in Yongin and the Honam region, each worth hundreds of trillions of won. Its Device eXperience division also moved into cooling solutions in earnest, acquiring Flakt Group, Europe's largest heating, ventilation and air conditioning company, for 1.5 billion euros, or about 2.3 trillion won, last November, and breaking ground on the 21st of this month on a new 240 billion won production line in Gwangju.
Samsung SDI (006400.KS) is recognized as having world-class technology in uninterruptible power supplies and battery backup units, both essential for running data centers that operate high-performance servers around the clock. The company unveiled a cylindrical lithium iron phosphate battery for the first time at Data Center World Asia 2026, Asia's largest data center exhibition, which opened in Singapore the same day. The new product strengthens both performance and safety based on proprietary structural technology.
Samsung C&T's construction division is aggressively pursuing large-scale infrastructure projects as an engineering, procurement and construction contractor in data center building and power generation. Samsung SDS handles data center design, construction and operation, and is leading the construction of the National AI Computing Center, a 2.5 trillion won government data center project.
