Two data center MoUs signed at Korea-Vietnam Business Forum

South Korean conglomerate Samsung signed an MoU with Vietnamese telecom provider CMC, agreeing to support CMC’s 130MW data center project in Ho Chi Minh City.

According to CMC, the project will be built in several phases. The $250m first phase will offer 30MW of capacity at completion, and subsequent phases, the amount of which is unknown, will supposedly bring total investment to approximately $1bn and boost total capacity up to 120MW.

Samsung’s construction and engineering subsidiary Samsung C&T Corporation will “invest in and implement CMC’s Hyperscale Data Center project in Ho Chi Minh City’s High-Tech Park… develop a long-term cooperation model applying environmentally friendly technologies… [and] share expertise, technology, and its global partner network to ensure the project’s timely completion and optimal performance.”

Samsung C&T has a strategic partnership with immersion cooling firm GRC, is involved in plans for a hydrogen fuel cell power plants linked to a data center in Chungnam, South Korea, and has previously worked on various skyscrapers, including the Burj Khalifa in the UAE, Taipei 101 in Taiwan, and Merdeka 118 in Malaysia.

CMC also signed 14 other MoUs with South Korean organizations, including chip designer CoAsia Semi Korea Corporation, AI service provider Kaon Group Company Limited, and enterprise software company Tmaxsoft. The remaining 11 MoUs were signed with South Korean universities and educational institutes.

LG signs MoU with Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group for data center

LG CNS, the AI and cloud computing segment of the LG conglomerate, will develop a hyperscale data center in Vietnam with the Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group (VNPT).

The two companies will be joined by Korea Investment Real Asset Management.

The exact location of the data center project is unknown, as is the projected capacity and development timeline.

VNPT is a state-owned telco and operates VinaPhone, one of Vietnam’s largest mobile networks. The exact number of data centers it currently operates is unclear, but its most notable is VNPT IDC Hoa Lac, which is a 23,000 sqm (247,570 sq ft), 2,000-rack facility outside of Hanoi.

The forum, held in Lotte Hotel Seoul, was attended by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam To Lam and the South Korean Prime Minister Kim Min Seok. A total of 52 memoranda were signed, pertaining to industries including tourism, industrial cooperation, clean energy, shipbuilding, aviation, finance, and port logistics.

To Lam attended the forum as part of a three-day state visit to South Korea, where he met President Lee Jae Myung and signed agreements pertaining to banking, human resource development, and various other sectors.

South Korean data center operators and AI service providers have been expanding into the Southeast Asian market.

LG CNS, which has experience in designing, building, and operating data centers, won a contract two weeks ago to build a 220MW data center in Jakarta, Indonesia, and in May, Korean telco KT signed a partnership worth KRW 130bn (USD$94.6m) with Vietnamese telco Viettel to provide, amongst other things, an AI-ready data center and a GPU server cluster.

By Jason Ma  – Data Centre Dynamics – August 20, 2025