Korean mega-deals reshape AI compute capacity
NAVER, NVIDIA and Brookfield Asset Management said on July 25 that they would expand NAVER's NVIDIA DSX AI factory at the GAK Sejong hyperscale data center in Sejong, South Korea, from an initial 55 megawatts to 200 megawatts by 2028, more than tripling a buildout committed just six weeks earlier. The total financing envelope is $10 billion, with Brookfield acting as exclusive capital partner and committing up to $9 billion under a nonbinding term sheet, NVIDIA investing roughly $1 billion as an equity stake in NAVER Corp., and NAVER funding the remainder. The site will deploy NVIDIA's Vera Rubin and Blackwell systems on the DSX platform announced at GTC Taipei 2026, making it among the first national AI facilities to combine both product lines.
In a parallel announcement on July 24 at the San Francisco AI Summit hosted by South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, SK Group and NVIDIA signed a letter of intent valued at more than $500 billion covering AI factories and memory, with SK hynix and NVIDIA agreeing to jointly develop next-generation high-bandwidth memory and long-term supply. SK Telecom said it would introduce NVIDIA's Rubin system and build an AI factory with up to 2 gigawatts of capacity starting in 2027, with SK hynix's HBM4 installed in Rubin. SK hynix separately reached a long-term memory supply agreement with Microsoft, while SK Telecom outlined gigawatt-scale data center work with Anthropic and expansion with AWS, including the Ulsan site.
Supermicro rolls out H15 servers and 72-GPU Helios platform
Super Micro Computer (NASDAQ: SMCI) announced its H15 server portfolio, powered by sixth-generation AMD EPYC 9006 CPUs and supporting up to 256 CPU cores, targeting data center contracts in high-performance computing environments. Central to the launch is the Helios Platform, which supports up to 72 GPUs and is designed for large-scale AI training workloads requiring dense, high-throughput configurations. The company is positioning the new rack-scale offerings to capture expanding capital budgets flowing into AI infrastructure globally, with order flow data for H15 systems expected to be a key focus for investors in coming quarters.
US Congress scrutinizes Pentagon data center leasing
The Department of Defense's practice of leasing land on military installations to private companies for AI server farms is drawing bipartisan scrutiny on Capitol Hill. The Air Force has offered unused land on five installations for private development, and the Army has already entered two conditional agreements, including a Carlyle Group facility on 1,384 acres at Fort Bliss in El Paso targeted for 2027 and a CyrusOne facility on 1,201 acres at Utah's Dugway Proving Ground targeted for 2029. A Republican amendment package from Rep. Ken Calvert adopted during the Defense spending bill markup acknowledged that data centers "place significant strain on energy and water resources and communities have resisted such projects" and would require DOD to brief Congress on local impacts before construction. The House NDAA, which passed the chamber this week, includes a provision from Rep. Cory Mills barring DOD from providing land to data centers containing "significant components" manufactured by US adversaries.
Texas and other states move to restrict data center growth
Local officials across Texas are increasingly resisting proposed AI-related data centers over noise, water use and grid strain, with at least 241 planned projects in the state according to Cleanview data cited by the Houston Chronicle. San Marcos became the first Texas city to use zoning rules to effectively keep data centers out on June 16, Brazoria County passed a June 10 resolution seeking regulations, and Missouri City updated its zoning code to require special permits, public hearings and disclosures of projected water and energy use. Six Texas counties have urged lawmakers to make the issue a top priority in the next legislative session, and support for a statewide moratorium has come from Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Gina Hinojosa, and Representatives Vikki Goodwin and Helen Kerwin. Outside Texas, at least 15 states have considered temporary data center bans, with New York recently becoming the first to enact a statewide moratorium. Governor Greg Abbott on June 10 urged the Public Utility Commission and ERCOT to shield residents from costs tied to data center expansion, while Senator Paul Bettencourt has argued that data centers should provide their own cogeneration and rely on closed-loop water systems.
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