Singapore-based asset manager Keppel has announced that its private fund, Keppel Data Centre Fund III (KDCF III), has obtained a land plot in Ansan, within the Seoul Metropolitan Area (SMA) in South Korea. The site will be used to develop a 60MW greenfield data centre, marking the company’s first foray into South Korea’s data centre market.

KDCF III will acquire a 73% effective stake in a special purpose vehicle that owns the land. The remaining 27% is held by a consortium of South Korean firms, including developer Shinyoung, financial services firm NH Securities and construction company Hyundai E&C.

The future facility on the site will be an AI-ready data centre, said Keppel in a June 9 release. Built with Tier III-equivalent specifications, the data centre will be primed to serve hyperscalers, cloud service providers and corporates.

Read also: Keppel appoints Anne Helen Richards as independent director to its board

Construction permits and power approvals have been secured for the site, with the data centre targeted to be operational by 2030.

The South Korean data centre market is growing rapidly, said Keppel, backed by cloud migration, AI adoption and the country’s ambition to become a global AI powerhouse. In the SMA, data centre power demand is expected to hit 2.3GW by 2030, driven by demand from both international and domestic firms.

At the same time, new data centre supply in the SMA is limited as regulatory requirements and power constraints have curtailed new developments. March data from JLL indicates that the SMA data centre market has a vacancy rate of just 1.4%, while the entire supply pipeline across 2025 to 2027 has already been fully pre-leased.

The SMA data centre landscape offers a compelling entry point for Keppel, observes Lee Hui Fang, chief investment officer for data centres at Keppel. “By securing scarce power in a shovel-ready site, we are building on our deep capabilities in data centre fund management and development to capture the full upside of Korea’s digital transformation,” she adds.

The Ansan facility will join Keppel’s existing portfolio of 39 data centres, which had a total gross power capacity of over 800MW as at the end of 2025. The project also marks the second investment by KDCF III, whose fund under management has grown to approximately $2.7 billion as of the end of 2025.

Check out the latest listings for Keppel properties