What started as a South Korean corporate investment is now reshaping part of America’s industrial heartland.
In Taylor, Texas, Samsung Electronics’ massive semiconductor plant — built by South Korea’s largest tech and manufacturing conglomerate and one of the world’s leading chip producers — has triggered a new wave of development, and now a Dallas developer is planning a 220-acre data center complex right next to it.
The project, known as Project Comal, is led by KDC Real Estate Development & Investments, which hopes to ride the momentum of Samsung’s growing presence, according to the Austin Business Journal.
Samsung’s $37 billion commitment in 2021 transformed Taylor from a quiet rural community into a center of global semiconductor production. Korean suppliers like Dongjin Semichem and Soulbrain followed, building facilities nearby and establishing a supply chain ecosystem on American soil.
Texas officials have responded with infrastructure built to match. The state spent $16.6 million to complete the “Samsung Highway,” connecting the site to major freight routes, and designated nearby land as a Samsung-linked employment zone. The University of Texas at Austin has opened a semiconductor research and training center in Taylor to supply talent for the expanding industry.
KDC, promoting Taylor as a development-ready site, notes that the area now has access to the water, power, and transportation systems built for Samsung — infrastructure that once served a single foreign factory but is now becoming part of Texas’s new tech corridor.
This is not just a local story. As South Korea’s biggest manufacturers plant deeper roots in the U.S., they’re changing where and how America builds its digital backbone. From El Paso, where Meta is developing a one-gigawatt data center, to West Texas, where an NVIDIA-backed firm is building a hyperscale complex, the pattern is clear: global tech power is remapping America’s landscape.
