Odaily Planet Daily reports that South Korea's SK Telecom (SKT) has announced the establishment of a new company, "SK Hyper," dedicated to Artificial Intelligence Data Centers (AIDCs), with a planned investment of 750 billion won to drive large-scale expansion of its AI data center business. The market believes this move will strengthen the company's AI infrastructure competitiveness and bring new growth expectations to its stock price. SK Telecom will initially invest 330 billion won and plans to invest a total of 750 billion won by December 2030, holding 100% of the company's equity. This organizational restructuring aims to accelerate the implementation of SK Telecom's medium- and long-term large-scale AIDC construction plan. The newly established SK Hyper will be responsible for the development and commercialization of future large-scale AI data center projects, including site selection, power infrastructure, and preliminary work such as customer business cooperation. Regarding business division, SK Telecom's existing 137MW data center assets, as well as the 100MW Ulsan AIDC project expected to be fully operational by 2029, will continue to be operated by SK Broadband. The newly added 900MW AIDC project in Ulsan, and the long-term target of 15GW super data center project in Hwangbo, will be led by SK Hyper. SK Hyper will adopt a "development-led" business model, rather than the traditional model of directly holding data center assets. The company will secure key resources such as land and power grids in advance, and will be responsible for the construction, ownership, and operation of data centers through special purpose vehicles (SPCs). This model is expected to reduce the financial pressure brought by large-scale capital investment. SK Hyper plans to introduce external funds such as financial investors (FI) equity investment and project financing (PF) to transfer the pressure of construction costs, capital expenditures, and depreciation to the project company, while generating revenue through development service fees and operating profit sharing. Analysts believe that the market previously questioned the feasibility of SK Telecom building a large-scale AIDC of more than 5GW, requiring tens of trillions of won, but the establishment of a special legal entity provides a more realistic expansion path. Coupled with the South Korean government's support for power supply and approval processes, and the advantages of SK Group's SK Hynix in memory chip supply, the speed of AIDC project progress and commercialization potential are expected to improve. According to Shin Hee-cheol, an analyst at iM Securities, the SK Hyper model, by focusing on early-stage development and utilizing external capital to complete construction and operation, can minimize SK Telecom's financial burden while balancing the expansion speed and profitability potential of AI data centers. (Ket)

At the inaugural Energy Investment Forum (EIF) held in Dallas, USA, Odaily reported that the AI wave is essentially driving a large-scale energy infrastructure construction, rather than simply a software competition. Bitcoin mining companies, with their years of experience in finding low-cost electricity, building modular computing facilities, and participating in grid regulation, have a certain advantage in the expansion of AI data centers. However, possessing electricity resources does not automatically guarantee the ability to build AI data centers. Alexander Neumüller, a researcher at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, stated that preliminary data shows that global annual electricity consumption for Bitcoin mining will increase from 138 terawatt-hours (TWh) to approximately 190 TWh between June 2024 and December 2025. About 10% of mining companies have already begun to use some electricity for AI or high-performance computing (HPC), and over 40% are exploring related transformations. The future integration of mining companies and AI infrastructure may take several forms, including building large-scale AI data centers, providing distributed computing power, continuing to operate Bitcoin mining, or transforming into grid service providers. (News.bitcoin)

According to Odaily Planet Daily, as monitored by on-chain analyst Yu Jin, the tokens unlocked and transferred from the Trump team address yesterday have entered CEXs. 13.8 million Trump tokens (US$21.94 million) were transferred to Binance, OKX, and Kucoin 15 minutes ago.