Hyundai locks in Saemangeum AI data center for robot AI; AutoEver commits KRW 114.6bn

Hyundai Motor Group said in a press release on Oct 30 that Hyundai Motor, Kia, Hyundai Mobis, Hyundai Engineering & Construction and Hyundai AutoEver have given final approval to invest in an AI data center at Saemangeum, North Jeolla, the first piece of the group's roughly KRW 9 trillion Saemangeum AI Valley, which also includes a robot manufacturing cluster, solar power and a hydrogen electrolysis plant.

Two special-purpose companies will be set up in November, one to build the hyperscale facility and one to buy GPUs and sell computing as a service. Construction is planned for March 2027 and service for early 2030.

The group said the center will train end-to-end autonomous-driving models around the clock and robot behaviour models in digital-twin environments, including vision-language task intelligence, mobile robotics and joint control.

The release gives no capacity, GPU count or per-company amounts. The DART filing adds what the release leaves out: Hyundai AutoEver will pay KRW 114.6 billion in six instalments from 2026 to 2031 for 26.0% of the GPU company, provisionally named HMG AI Factory.

MEKAWIRE's derivation: if that stake is priced like the others, the GPU company's committed equity is about KRW 441 billion. The group also opened an HMG Saemangeum office in Gunsan on Oct 30. Hyundai Motor Group published its apartment parking-robot trial the same day, and Hyundai Mobis set out its Atlas actuator plan.