[Paju (Gyeonggi) = E-Daily Reporter Yoon Jeong-hoon] At 9 a.m. on the 5th, we arrived at the construction site of the #LG Uplus Paju AI Data Center (AIDC) after a bus ride of about an hour from Seoul City Hall Station. Located in an industrial complex that houses the #LG Display factory, the area was so quiet that there was hardly any passing traffic. At the site, five large cranes and hundreds of workers were bustling about, working on the construction of the main data center building and an annex.

Upon entering Data Center Building 1, which is scheduled to be the first to be completed next year, the sight of cooling pipe racks densely filling the high, open ceiling immediately caught the eye. This space will serve as a mechanical room housing core cooling and HVAC equipment such as chillers, pumps, and heat exchangers, with a ceiling height of a staggering 6.9 meters.

The second floor of Building 1 will house the electrical room, while the third through fifth floors will be configured as server rooms to accommodate the actual servers. LGU+ designed the floor load capacity to be 2.0 tons per square meter to support the weight of heavy GPU servers and liquid cooling equipment. This is 4 to 6 times the load capacity of a typical office building (0.3–0.5 tons per square meter).

Kim Jong-jin, Team Leader of the LG U+ Site Team, stated, “We are making every preparation to immediately accommodate servers that require 100% liquid cooling, such as NVIDIA’s next-generation AI superchip ‘Vera Rubin.’” He explained, “Three climate control rooms will be installed on each floor of the data center. With the climate control rooms positioned in the center, the piping has been designed with dual systems to accommodate both air cooling and D2C (Direct to Chip) liquid cooling when server racks are installed on both sides.”

The current construction progress for Building 1 is approximately 20%. While the structural framework has reached the fourth floor, 80% of the overall process—including piping, electrical work, cooling systems, and finishing—remains to be completed. Structural work is scheduled to be completed by the end of October, with the entire project slated for completion in May 2027.

Preparing for Veralubin at 11.8 billion won per rack… Easily handles 200kW power

This AIDC facility is drawing attention as it is being built as a hyperscale infrastructure capable of fully supporting Veralubin—scheduled for release by NVIDIA in the second half of this year—making it the only such facility in Korea. Verallubin is the highest-spec AI platform to date, integrating CPUs, GPUs, and LPUs into a single ecosystem. Morgan Stanley estimates that a single Verallubin-based rack system (VR200 NVL72) will cost approximately $7.8 million (about 11.8 billion won). This is nearly double the price of the previous-generation Blackwell rack (6 billion won).

A rack is a shelf-like steel structure measuring approximately 60 cm wide, 1 m deep, and 2 m tall, serving as a compact AI computing unit that integrates GPUs, networking, power, and cooling systems. Filling a single rack with Veralubin would cost as much as dozens of mid-sized apartments. Power supply is critical to accommodate this rack. While power consumption per rack in conventional data centers ranges from 5 to 10 kW, a Veralubin rack consumes up to 200 kW. This means a single rack consumes as much power as an entire apartment complex.

LGU+ has mobilized the full capabilities of the "One LG" ecosystem to ensure a stable power supply. In existing data centers, power losses occurred due to repeated AC-to-DC and DC-to-AC conversions as AC power was transmitted to servers. To address this, LGU+ is jointly developing an 800V DC power distribution system with LS Electric. This system minimizes power losses by reducing the number of conversions, marking a key difference from existing AC-based infrastructure.

Furthermore, the "One LG" system will utilize "Free Cooling Chillers" produced by LG Electronics to generate cooling water, while UPS batteries from LG Energy Solution will immediately restore power during outages. According to internal validation results, the D2C liquid cooling method improves energy efficiency by approximately 24% compared to air cooling.

The Largest Data Center in the Seoul Metropolitan Area at 200 MW... Customers Queuing Up Before Building 1 Is Even Completed

Upon completion, Paju AIDC will have a total power capacity of 200 MW. Paju is the only data center in the Seoul metropolitan area to secure this scale. The 200 MW represents the total power consumed by the entire building, of which the IT load actually supplied to the servers is approximately 127.7 MW. Specifically, by building: △Building 1: 51 MW △Building 2: 21.5 MW △Building 3: 72.5 MW △Building 4: 55 MW.

Once the AIDC is completed, the DBO (Design, Build, and Operate) business model, which provides comprehensive support for design, construction, and operation, is expected to gain further momentum. Whereas past data center businesses operated on a model of dividing server space (floor area) and charging monthly rent, LGU+ offers a package that includes 200 kW of power per rack, liquid cooling, and an AI-based infrastructure management system (DCIM) for a premium usage fee when customers bring their own servers.

In fact, Building 1, scheduled for completion next June, has already been fully booked by global big tech companies. LGU+ has set a goal of achieving an average annual revenue growth of 15–20% to reach cumulative orders of 5 trillion won by 2030.

Ahn Hyung-kyun, Head of the Enterprise AI Business Group at LG Uplus (Senior Vice President), stated, “We will transform into an ‘AI Factory Operator’ that integrates and manages all elements—including GPU resource management, power, and cooling—like a factory,” adding, “We aim to achieve cumulative orders of 5 trillion won by 2030.”