Amazon subsidiary to invest $5 billion in South Korea, presidential office says

GYEONGJU, South Korea (Reuters) -Amazon Web Services will invest at least $5 billion in South Korea by 2031 to build new artificial intelligence data centres in the Asian country, South Korea's presidential office said on Wednesday.  The announcement was made during AWS chief executive officer Matt Garman's meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, Lee's office said in a statement.  Amazon is one of seven global firms whose executives attended the group meeting with Lee in Gyeongju, South Korea, and pledged a total of $9 billion in investments for the next five years, the presidential office said.  Amazon's investment will accelerate the growth of an ecosystem for the AI industry in South Korea, as the country aims to become one of the world's top three AI leaders, Lee said at the meeting with Garman.  "At AWS, we've invested and committed to investment of an additional $40 billion across 14 non-U.S. APEC countries and economies between now and 2028," Garman said. "And, that $40 billion actually drives an additional $45 billion in U.S. GDP and downstream benefit, benefiting all of the APEC economy," he said at a business event on the sidelines of the summit. AWS unveiled in June a $5 billion investment plan in South Korea with local conglomerate SK Group for building the country's biggest data centre. It has also announced investments in other countries including Japan, Australia and Singapore. (Reporting by Heejin Kim and Jihoon Lee; Editing by Himani Sarkar)

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