Prime Highlights :
- Naver stock jumps 10% as Nvidia takes a 4.5% stake through a $1 billion investment.
- Naver, Nvidia and Brookfield plan a $10 billion AI data centre expansion in South Korea.
Key Facts :
- Nvidia buys 7.2 million new Naver shares at 204,500 won each.
- GAK Sejong expansion targets 200 megawatts of capacity by 2028.
Background :
Naver shares surged 10% after Nvidia agreed to invest $1 billion in the South Korean cloud company, giving the chipmaker a 4.5% stake and marking a fresh step in their growing AI partnership.
Naver said it would place 7.2 million new shares with Nvidia at 204,500 won each, a 1% discount to its previous closing price, as part of the deal. Investment group Brookfield will provide up to $9 billion in financing as the project’s capital partner, Naver added.
The investment lifts Nvidia among Naver’s biggest shareholders, trailing the National Pension Service, which held a 9.25% stake, and BlackRock Fund Advisors, which held 6.12%, as of the end of 2025.
As a first step, the companies and Brookfield plan to expand Naver’s AI data centre in South Korea with up to $10 billion in funding. The expansion will rise at Naver’s GAK data centre in Sejong, running on Nvidia’s Vera Rubin and Blackwell chip platforms, with capacity reaching 200 megawatts by 2028.
The move builds on an earlier agreement between the two firms to pursue gigawatt-scale AI infrastructure across South Korea and international markets. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said Naver would grow tenfold once that vision takes shape.
A gigawatt of capacity runs about four times larger than GAK Sejong, South Korea’s largest hyperscale data centre, and could support hundreds of thousands of Nvidia’s newest GPUs at once, according to Naver.
Huang has pushed the view that nations should build and control their own AI infrastructure, a strategy that could widen Nvidia’s customer base beyond major U.S. hyperscalers. Nvidia has also backed other AI ventures, including a $30 billion investment in OpenAI and a $10 billion investment in Anthropic.
