Busan selected for shipbuilding AI data center pilot project

The Busan city government announced Monday that its "Busan Shipbuilding and Marine Edge AI Data Center Construction Project" has been selected for the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy's "2026 Industrial Complex Edge AIDC Demonstration Pilot Project" program.

The project aims to accelerate the AI transformation of the manufacturing sector by providing shared AI computing infrastructure that individual companies in industrial complexes would find difficult to build on their own. Busan submitted its application with the Myeongjinoksan National Industrial Complex as the target site.

Construction will run for 12 months from this July through June next year, followed by a mandatory five-year operating period. Total project costs stand at 18.3 billion won ($12.1 million), comprising 14 billion won in national government funding, 2.1 billion won from the city and 2.2 billion won from the private sector. The Korea Industrial Complex Corporation's Busan regional headquarters will lead the project, with five institutions and companies participating: Elice Group, Busan Technopark, EasyAI, Gensolution and Pomit.

The city plans to build an edge AI data center at Myeongjinoksan — the first at any national industrial complex in the country — powered by both GPUs and domestically developed NPUs. The data center will be equipped with 32 H200 GPUs and 168 NPUs, operating under a role-separated structure in which GPUs handle training and validation while domestic NPUs manage inference and always-on services.

The domestic NPU share will be expanded to 84 percent, contributing to the growth of the domestic AI semiconductor ecosystem. Three manufacturing AI software-as-a-service offerings — covering smart factories, vision AI industrial safety and digital twin predictive maintenance — will also be demonstrated and deployed in sequence. AI computing resources will be offered at up to 50 percent below commercial cloud rates, reducing the upfront investment and operational burden for companies in the complex.

The city and the Korea Industrial Complex Corporation's Busan office are targeting a beta launch in December, while developing a self-sustaining operational model for after the mandatory operating period ends. The project is expected to expand to other shipbuilding industry clusters, including those in the southeastern region, Daebul and Gunsan.