Hyundai Motor Group is to set out a multi-billion-dollar investment plan on South Korea’s west coast.
According to The Chosun Daily, the group could commit Won10tn ($6.97bn) over five years to the Saemangeum area in Jeollabuk-do province.
The investment aims to develop the region as a base for industries including artificial intelligence, hydrogen energy and robotics.
A deal could be signed as early as this week with the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources, the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment, and the Ministry of Science and ICT.
The plan expected to be unveiled alongside central and local government.
Projects being discussed include an AI data centre, large-scale water electrolysis facilities to produce hydrogen, and robot manufacturing capacity.
Solar generation is also being considered to help supply the power demand created by data-centre operations and hydrogen production.
Saemangeum’s scale is a key factor: the reclaimed area is reported at around 409 square km, about 140 times the size of Seoul’s Yeouido, along with solar conditions suited to large renewable buildouts.
The proposed spending would be one of the first concrete steps linked to Hyundai Motor Group’s broader Won125tn Korea investment programme announced last November for the five years from 2026.
The group has been weighing sites in the south-west while steering away from established industrial centres such as Ulsan and Gwangju.
A large share of the Saemangeum outlay is expected to go into the AI data centre.
The report also points to a push to secure advanced compute capacity, citing an October meeting involving Hyundai Motor Group chair Chung Eui-sun, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Samsung Electronics chair Lee Jae-yong that included plans to obtain 50,000 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs,
The move could support faster development of AI-driven autonomous systems and robotics.
On hydrogen, Hyundai is already running a water electrolysis demonstration in Saemangeum.
The group’s Jeonju Plant in Wanju, which produces hydrogen commercial vehicles such as buses and trucks, could take on an expanded role as part of a broader hydrogen ecosystem connected to the Saemangeum build-out.
Hyundai is also understood to be considering a robot factory in the area, with investment potentially in the hundreds of billions of won.
The report references the company’s humanoid robot Atlas shown at CES 2026, while noting production plans for Saemangeum are not finalised; possible outputs mentioned include the Mobed mobile platform and wearable robots for industrial use.
Just Auto has contacted Hyundai Motor Group for a comment.
