Naver has signed an agreement with Brookfield to secure up to $9 billion, about 11.92 trillion won, in artificial intelligence computing infrastructure. The deal gives a formal financing and asset structure to the AI factory project Naver is pursuing with Brookfield and Nvidia, while satisfying a condition for Nvidia’s planned $1 billion strategic equity investment in Naver.
Under the arrangement, an investment vehicle affiliated with Brookfield will establish a special-purpose company provisionally called Asset Co. That company will acquire graphics processing units, data center capacity and related infrastructure. Naver Cloud will use the computing resources through a GPU-as-a-service model and sell AI data center services to external customers.
The division of responsibilities is designed to limit Naver’s initial capital expenditure. Brookfield will arrange funding for the infrastructure, Naver will lead operations and customer acquisition, and Nvidia will provide computing technology support, including its high-performance platform. Naver Cloud’s usage payments are intended to be linked to business revenue, meaning the company says it will not necessarily absorb the full cost of unused capacity.
Staged expansion limits upfront spending
Naver plans to use its Sejong data center as the initial base for the project. Capacity is scheduled to begin at 55 megawatts in the first half of 2027, rise to 200 megawatts in 2028 and eventually reach 1 gigawatt. This staged expansion allows infrastructure deployment to follow customer demand rather than requiring the entire planned capacity to be built at once.
The financing structure reduces direct GPU purchasing costs but does not remove Naver’s exposure. Naver has agreed to guarantee Naver Cloud’s usage-payment obligations for up to eight years. The disclosed guarantee ceiling is 18.74 trillion won, equivalent to 64.7 percent of Naver’s equity, making demand for the new computing capacity central to the project’s financial stability.
- Initial capacity
- 55 megawatts in the first half of 2027
- Next expansion target
- 200 megawatts in 2028
- Long-term target
- 1 gigawatt
- Guarantee ceiling
- 18.74 trillion won, or 64.7 percent of Naver’s equity
Completion of the Brookfield agreement also clears a prerequisite for Nvidia’s proposed investment. Once the third-party allotment capital increase is completed, Nvidia is expected to own about 4.5 percent of Naver. Investors will now be watching the pace of customer commitments, the utilization of the first 55-megawatt phase and whether revenue growth keeps pace with the guaranteed payment obligations as capacity expands.