A $1 Billion Stake, Backed by Brookfield
Nvidia has agreed to buy roughly 7.24 million newly issued shares in Naver Corporation for about $1 billion, acquiring a 4.5% stake in South Korea’s dominant search and cloud company, according to a joint announcement from Naver, Nvidia, and investment firm Brookfield. The shares are priced at 204,500 won (about $140) each, with payment due October 30. Once Naver retires a matching block of treasury shares, Nvidia is expected to become the company’s third-largest shareholder, behind the National Pension Service and BlackRock.
The deal expands a partnership the two companies first outlined in June, and follows Nvidia’s earlier $500 billion infrastructure pact with SK Group and its joint AI lab with KAIST in Seoul.
Quadrupling Capacity at Sejong
The investment funds an expansion of Naver’s GAK Sejong data center, scaling its capacity from 55 megawatts to 200 megawatts by 2028, with a longer-term target of 1 gigawatt. Brookfield has signed a nonbinding term sheet to contribute up to $9 billion toward the buildout, while Naver funds the remainder. The facility will run on Nvidia’s Vera Rubin and Blackwell chip architectures, managed through Nvidia’s DSX platform and DSX OS lifecycle software.
Naver plans to launch an AI agent platform built on the expanded infrastructure in the second half of 2026.
Part of a Sovereign AI Push
The announcement came as South Korean President Lee Jae-myung attended an AI summit in San Francisco. “AI factories are the infrastructure nations need to compete and innovate in the intelligence era,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said. Naver founder Haejin Lee said the partnership would “strengthen South Korea’s AI competitiveness.”
The agreement fits a broader pattern of governments and national tech champions building dedicated AI infrastructure at home rather than relying solely on US hyperscalers — a trend some analysts call “sovereign AI.”