Power and concrete are turning into the scarce inputs of the AI buildout, and Samsung wants a piece of both. The group is committing $1B to Helix Digital Infrastructure, the AI infrastructure venture KKR set up in June with Nvidia among its founding backers.
Samsung Electronics and five affiliates are sharing the commitment. The chip unit carries $500M of it. Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance, Samsung Life Insurance, Samsung SDI, Samsung SDS and Samsung C&T are supplying the balance.
The market liked the news: Samsung Electronics gained about 2 percent while the Kospi benchmark slipped.
Helix aims at both halves of the constraint. It builds out hyperscale data centers, and it also chases the generation, transmission and distribution capacity those sites need, along with fiber links.
The chief executive at Helix is Adam Selipsky. He ran Amazon Web Services before taking on the job. Founding money came from Vistra, a U.S. power company, plus KKR, Nvidia and the Kuwait Investment Authority, and KKR says total commitments have passed $10B.
Varied pieces of Samsung fit the same puzzle, from memory and cooling hardware to construction and batteries. According to Samsung, the cash is meant to move AI data center construction ahead faster around the world and to pull the participating companies closer together.
For KKR, the stake extends a long run in hard assets: the firm puts deployed capital across digital infrastructure and power north of $75B worldwide, and about $9B of that landed in Korea, a run dating to 2009.
