Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shakes hands with Naver Chairman Lee Jae-jin at Nvidia’s headquarters in California after signing an investment contract worth US$1 billion. (courtesy Naver)
Nvidia is expected to become Naver’s third-largest shareholder upon acquiring a 4.5% stake in the Korean internet portal giant. Naver plans on accelerating its efforts to expand its global artificial intelligence infrastructure business using Nvidia’s strategic investment and funding from global investment firm Brookfield. Naver announced Monday that it had procured a strategic investment of US$1 billion from Nvidia through a third-party private placement. The investment follows up on the agreement the two firms unveiled last month to build a “gigawatt-scale” AI factory. The investment gives Nvidia a 4.5% stake in Naver (7,241,564 common shares), and will mark the first time in 22 years that it has sought a third-party share allocation, and the first time since it was listed on the KOSPI in 2008. As part of its efforts to boost shareholder value, Naver is also proceeding with a major share buyback. At a board meeting held on Friday, the company approved the buyback of 4.9 million of its own shares, valued at around 1 trillion won, to be cancelled on Aug. 3.The investment is the central axis of Naver’s US$10 billion AI infrastructure package announced during the San Francisco AI summit attended by President Lee Jae Myung on Saturday. Naver also unveiled plans for US$9 billion in investments and infrastructure supply cooperation with the global investment firm Brookfield, which it plans to use to stably acquire the latest graphics processing units (GPUs) and data centers needed for its high-megawatt AI factory. Naver affiliate Naver Cloud is also working out the details of a contract to build an AI compute partnership with Nvidia for a joint AI factory project. If all goes well, the two companies will take their collaboration from a technological partnership to a strategic one encompassing financial investments, client acquisition and more. Naver plans to start bringing in revenue from its AI factory business starting in 2027. The company plans to begin operating a 55-megawatt-scale global AI factory in the first half of 2027, expand it to 200 megawatts by 2028, and ultimately develop a gigawatt-scale AI infrastructure platform. Its long-term strategy is to address rising demand for sovereign AI infrastructure in the Asia-Pacific, European and Middle Eastern markets.“Investments from Nvidia and Brookfield will become an important turning point for Naver’s future growth,” said Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon, saying that the company plans to work quickly to wrap up customer acquisition for the AI factory and “make this watershed moment for Naver in which it stakes its place as a key player in the global AI infrastructure space.”By Sun Dam-eun, staff reporterPlease direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]
