Seven Global Firms Pledge Record $2 Billion to Korea's Chip and AI Buildout

Seven global companies have pledged a record $2 billion in investments across Korea's semiconductor, materials and AI infrastructure sectors, the largest haul in the 22-year history of the Invest Korea Summit.

The Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) announced the commitments at the summit's 2026 edition, a three-day event co-hosted with the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources that opened in Seoul on Wednesday. Roughly 97 percent of the pledged funds will flow to regions outside the Seoul metropolitan area — a deliberate push to spread industrial growth beyond the capital.

The event drew 267 foreign investors and companies, plus around 2,000 business officials from around the world. The commitments cover the full arc of the chip and AI supply chain: wafer-adjacent materials, advanced packaging, equipment, data centers and the power to run them.

Who is investing, and in what?

The pledge list reads like a map of the semiconductor ecosystem:

• Air Liquide (France): facilities producing specialty gases used in semiconductor manufacturing.
• Amkor Technology (U.S.): expansion of its advanced packaging plant in Gwangju. Amkor ranks as the world's second-largest semiconductor assembly and testing company.
• Henkel (Germany): an R&D center for advanced packaging materials used in high-bandwidth memory chips, deepening collaboration with Korean semiconductor companies.
• Tokyo Electron (Japan): a new semiconductor equipment and materials manufacturing facility.
• Nscale (U.K.): an AI data center.
• Gurin Energy (Singapore) and Deep Wind Offshore (Norway): renewable energy generation projects.

The Henkel and Amkor commitments land squarely in high-bandwidth memory packaging — the segment where Korea's memory giants are racing to meet AI accelerator demand, and where materials and OSAT capacity have become bottlenecks.

What does the record pledge signal?

KOTRA framed the figure as a vote of confidence. "The record-high investment pledges demonstrate global companies' confidence in the Korean economy," KOTRA President and CEO Kang Kyung-sung said.

He pointed to the country's fundamentals. "Korea, with its solid manufacturing base, abundant industrial data, and transparent and predictable investment environment, is an attractive investment destination for the AI transformation of manufacturing. We will expand our economic territory by connecting foreign investment with industrial and regional growth and expanding global cooperation."

The agency is positioning Korea as a prime destination at a moment when AI infrastructure demand is pulling capital toward chipmaking, packaging and the power-hungry data centers that host them. The project mix — gases, packaging materials, equipment, a data center and two renewable energy developers — mirrors exactly where that money wants to go.

How did the summit address regional growth?

A record 11 local governments joined the summit's investment promotion forum, pitching regional growth strategies, specific projects and incentives to foreign companies. That regional focus explains the 97 percent figure: most of the major projects are expected to sit outside greater Seoul, tying foreign capital to the government's broader balanced-growth agenda.

The main international conference pulled in executives from Amazon Web Services Korea, Deep Wind Offshore and Dexterity. Panels examined investment opportunities from AI adoption, data center expansion and demand for stable, clean energy — the power question that increasingly shapes where data centers get built.

Speakers also argued Korea's advanced manufacturing base could complement emerging physical AI technologies, and sketched new business opportunities tied to government-led megaprojects and potential Korean-foreign partnerships.

With the summit running through Friday, KOTRA will be watching whether this year's record pledges convert into contracted, shovel-ready projects — and whether next year's edition can top $2 billion as AI infrastructure spending keeps climbing.