Kakao Data Center Ansan

Kakao Data Center Ansan is Kakao's first wholly self-built and self-operated data center, completed in September 2023 and brought into service in January 2024 on the ERICA campus of Hanyang University in Ansan, Gyeonggi-do, about 40 km southwest of Seoul. Kakao built the facility in direct response to an October 2022 fire at a third-party data center — SK C&C's Pangyo site — that knocked out KakaoTalk and other services for days, and the design emphasizes redundancy: backup power equal to 100% of primary supply, two independent substations, and standby generators sized to keep the site running if both substations fail. The building covers 47,378 square meters with roughly 4,000 racks and capacity for about 120,000 servers and 6 exabytes of storage. A free-cooling system run in three seasonal modes cuts water use by about 98% versus conventional designs and keeps PUE at or below 1.3. The structure is rated to withstand a magnitude-6.5 earthquake and holds top domestic grades for building energy efficiency and green building certification.