Naver secures $10 billion AI factory backing from Nvidia and Brookfield

Naver said Tuesday it has lined up $10 billion (14 trillion won) for an AI factory at its Sejong data center, with Nvidia taking a $1 billion stake and Brookfield's AI infrastructure fund raising up to $9 billion of the total.

The plan turns what began as a 55-megawatt buildout into a 200-megawatt facility, roughly 100,000 GPUs, using Nvidia's DSX architecture. Naver will contribute the remainder of the funding, and Brookfield will act as exclusive capital partner, raising its share through a special purpose vehicle.

Nvidia's investment comes through a third-party allotment of new shares. The first facility will sit at Sejong, Naver's data center in the central city.

The buildout is scheduled in stages: 55 megawatts operating in the first half of 2027, 100 megawatts by the end of that year and the full 200 megawatts in 2028, with a longer-term target of gigawatt scale. Naver said the AI factory business marks a shift in the industry from model training toward inference, in which large infrastructure must be operated reliably.

"We will scale this to gigawatt level, and if this plan is realized, Naver will become a company 10 times larger than it is now," Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said, according to the company's website.

Naver will bring in Blackwell and then Vera Rubin systems and is the first Korean company to join the Nvidia Nemotron coalition. It plans to launch an AI agent platform in the second half and to develop a "Seoul world model."

"Nvidia's strategic investment and the infrastructure supply contract with Brookfield have brought Naver's vision for the AI factory business into a strong phase of execution," said Lee Hae-jin, chairman of Naver's board. "Building on the solid cooperation we have completed with global partners, we will lead technological innovation, foster a sovereign AI ecosystem and step forward in strengthening Korea's AI competitiveness."

Lee said Naver is the first company in the world to build a SuperPOD with GPUs and operates the largest service in Asia, and that it has already designed and run its own data centers rather than starting from scratch on cloud infrastructure.