NAVER, NVIDIA and Brookfield commit $10B to Korea AI factory

NAVER, NVIDIA and Brookfield plan to expand Korea's sovereign AI factory to 200 megawatts by 2028, more than tripling the initial 55-megawatt buildout announced last month, as nations race to secure domestic AI compute capacity.

"AI factories are the infrastructure nations need to compete and innovate in the intelligence era," Jensen Huang, founder and chief executive officer of NVIDIA, said. "Together, NAVER, NVIDIA and Brookfield are building sovereign AI infrastructure at the scale needed to fuel Korea's startups and industries."

NVIDIA plans to invest $1 billion in NAVER, while Brookfield has signed a nonbinding term sheet to fund as much as $9 billion. NAVER will cover the remaining costs. The expanded facility at NAVER's GAK Sejong hyperscale data center in Sejong, South Korea, will feature NVIDIA's Vera Rubin and Blackwell platforms, with a long-term roadmap to reach 1 gigawatt.

The partnership positions NAVER as a sovereign AI cloud provider for both Korean and US startups, challenging the dominance of US hyperscalers in the Asia-Pacific region. Brookfield, which manages about $100 billion across the AI infrastructure value chain, is betting that national governments will increasingly demand domestically controlled compute — a trend that could reshape how AI capacity is financed and deployed globally.

The 200-megawatt buildout represents a significant acceleration of Korea's national AI ambitions. President Jae Myung Lee announced the expansion during his AI Summit visit to San Francisco, highlighting the government's push to secure sovereign compute capacity. NAVER, Korea's largest internet company with 2025 sales of 12.04 trillion won ($8.18 billion), intends to extend its deployment of NVIDIA AI infrastructure to 1 gigawatt over time.

The deal marks Brookfield's most significant AI infrastructure commitment in Asia. The investment firm, which has operated in Korea since 2014 and manages roughly $12 billion in local assets across infrastructure, real estate and energy, is using its partnership with NVIDIA through the Brookfield Global AI Infrastructure Program. Sikander Rashid, global head of AI infrastructure at Brookfield, said the partnership combines the firm's capital and power expertise with NVIDIA's accelerated computing platform to support large-scale AI factory deployments.

For NVIDIA, the investment deepens its strategy of embedding its full-stack platform — spanning chips, systems, software and facilities — into national AI infrastructure projects. The NVIDIA DSX platform, which includes MaxLPS software for maximizing token throughput per megawatt and DSX OS for lifecycle management, is purpose-built for multi-tenant AI factories serving multiple customers from a single facility.

Open Models and Agent Platforms Expand the Deal's Scope

NAVER is deepening its technology collaboration with NVIDIA beyond infrastructure. The company is advancing its HyperCLOVA X large language models using NVIDIA's Nemotron 3 Ultra open models, and it became the first Korean company to join the NVIDIA Nemotron Coalition for open model development. NAVER plans to launch an AI agent platform in Korea in the second half of this year, powered by NVIDIA's Agent Toolkit and NemoClaw blueprints. Separately, it is developing a Seoul World Model using proprietary urban street-view data built on NVIDIA's Cosmos world foundation models.

The expansion comes as governments across Asia, Europe and North America race to build sovereign AI infrastructure, concerned that reliance on US-based cloud providers could create strategic vulnerabilities. Brookfield's involvement shows that institutional capital is flowing aggressively into the space — the firm manages more than $1 trillion in total assets and has established one of the industry's largest dedicated AI infrastructure investment platforms.

NVIDIA shares stand to benefit from the expanded deployment of its Vera Rubin and Blackwell platforms, which will drive incremental GPU sales through the multi-tenant factory model. For NAVER, the partnership transforms its cloud business from a domestic search and commerce operator into a regional AI infrastructure contender — though the $9 billion in Brookfield financing remains subject to final documentation. The deal is expected to close after NAVER secures at least $9 billion in committed financing, separate from NVIDIA's planned $1 billion investment.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.