When Korea’s Ministry of Science and Technology committed to building one of the world’s most advanced sovereign AI infrastructures, it partnered with SK Telecom (SKT), one of the country’s largest tech conglomerates. The mission was clear: enable Korea to build, house, and support AI innovation fully within its borders. The result is “Haein,” one of Korea’s largest and most powerful GPU-as-a-Service cluster, which pushes the previous limits of compute, defining a new model for collaboration, execution, and national AI strategy.
Central to this effort is the collaboration between SK Telecom and Penguin Solutions.
The Collaboration that Made It Possible
Penguin Solutions is a critical innovation partner to SKT on this AI-enabled journey. The two companies formalized a collaboration agreement in January 2025, following the 2024 announcement of SK Telecom’s strategic investment in Penguin Solutions.
The creation of Haein marks the first outcome from Penguin and SKT and speaks volumes about future possibilities, given the companies’ technical depth and shared vision aligned to AI solutions.
Penguin Solutions managed the design, build, and deployment of the supercomputer, working across time zones, coordinating global logistics and assembling a Korea-based team to execute locally. The cluster became production-ready in August 2025, which was within just weeks of all materials arriving onsite.
Built for Korea, Built at Speed
Amid rising demand for generative AI, LLMs, and hybrid AI solutions, the Haein supercluster represents a strategic inflection point for Korea’s AI landscape. The initiative addresses head-on the country’s position within the broader competitive landscape across Asia, providing a sovereign-first approach. The infrastructure will power advanced Korean LLMs trained on culturally and linguistically relevant data, serving government, academic, and enterprise use cases.
Haein is more than just another AI project—it is the foundation of Korea’s aspiration to lead in global AI innovation. The cluster has been selected to support the national program to develop Korea-specific AI foundation models, boosting local competitiveness and reducing reliance on foreign platforms. SKT plans to leverage Haein to advance its AI data center infrastructure, including the Gasan AI Data Center, into a core hub for the growth of Korea’s AI industry.
Technical Execution, Unprecedented Timeline
Haein is a triumph of execution, standing out as one of the fastest deployments of an AI supercomputing system at this scale. Order placement to go-live took just two months, hitting numerous key milestones along the way, including:
- Standing up 1,000+ NVIDIA B200 GPUs powering the core cluster
- Managing 50+ miles of precision-laid fiber-optic cable
- Integrating into SK broadband’s AI-ready Gasan data center
- Fully deploying Penguin Solutions ICE ClusterWare™ for simplified provisioning, health management, performance optimization with automated remediation, and multi-tenant resource management
- Integrating Petasus AI Cloud, which is an on-premises, Kubernetes-based virtualization platform optimized for AI datacenter workloads and AI Cloud Manager software platforms, plus an end-to-end solution for managing AI model development, training, and deployment. (Both platforms are SK Telecom's self-developed solutions.)
Strategic Platform for Scalable Sovereign AI
Haein is a strategic platform. It offers GPU-as-a-Service to Korean developers, businesses, and institutions, delivering a highly flexible, scalable, and secure way to build advanced AI capabilities without needing to own and manage infrastructure. This model removes friction, shortens training cycles, and allows users to push into more complex, compute-heavy experimentation.
Penguin Solutions maintains and evolves the platform, providing enterprise-grade reliability, predictable performance, clear upgrade paths, and 24/7 help desk support services.
As sovereign AI needs expand, Haein is ready to scale.
Future Pathways: Inference, Expansion, and Beyond
While no formal expansion roadmap has been publicly announced, the success of Haein serves as powerful demonstration of the capabilities of the Penguin / SKT collaboration which is built for the long term. What began as a single, high-stakes deployment now forms the foundation for future infrastructure projects that can redefine Korea’s AI landscape and positions Penguin Solutions as a global leader in high-performance AI infrastructure at scale.
Korea-US Business Roundtable: Manufacturing Renaissance Partnership
On August 25, Mark Adams, Penguin Solutions President and CEO, joined the KORUS Business Roundtable in Washington, D.C., alongside President Lee Jae Myung, senior Korean officials, top Korean business leaders, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, and leading U.S. executives. Together, Korea and the U.S. are working to strengthen supply chains, drive innovation, and shape the future of global manufacturing.
Penguin Solutions is proud to contribute through our partnership with SK Telecom on the Haein Sovereign AI Infrastructure advancing Korea’s next generation of AI.
Is your organization looking for the right strategic partner to help you take the next step? Penguin Solutions invites organizations, institutions, and enterprises to explore how its team of experts can help by providing the same speed, flexibility, and precision that now powers one of Korea’s most advanced clusters—contact us today.
