Naver plans to raise $1 billion from Nvidia through a third-party allotment to fund an AI factory, a deal that would give Nvidia about 4.5% of Naver and reduce board chair Lee Hae-jin’s stake from 4.03% to about 3.84%. The project assigns Brookfield up to $9 billion in infrastructure investment, while Nvidia supplies GPUs and related technology and Naver Cloud operates the facilities and seeks customers.
Naver aims to begin operating a 55MW facility in the first half of next year and eventually expand capacity to 1GW, with plans to offer models and solutions through Nvidia’s sovereign AI business. Whether Naver can secure enough customers to use the large-scale facilities steadily remains a key profitability risk.