Betting on South Korean AI infrastructure! Nvidia makes $1 billion equity investment, becoming NAVER's third largest shareholder

Nvidia's strategic move in South Korea's AI infrastructure landscape is transitioning from verbal collaboration commitments at Jensen Huang's dinner table to real capital equity binding.

On July 27, NAVER announced that it has signed an investment agreement with Nvidia through a third-party private placement. Nvidia will acquire a 4.5% stake in NAVER for $1 billion (about 1.48 trillion KRW), making it NAVER’s third-largest shareholder. Simultaneously, NAVER signed a preliminary contract with global asset manager Brookfield for up to $9 billion to raise funds for the expansion of its AI factory project at the Sejong City data center.

This marks the first time that Nvidia, as a strategic shareholder, has entered a local internet platform in a key Asian AI market—signaling that the computing power giant is no longer satisfied with just chip deliveries, but is now directly embedding its balance sheet into the expansion track of downstream AI infrastructure.

From GPU Supply to 4.5% Equity: Nvidia “Anchors” Its Korean Ecosystem

Third-party private placements are typically used to bring in strategic partners or to inject capital quickly. By choosing this approach to bring in Nvidia, NAVER aims to elevate their relationship from a simple buyer-seller model in computing power to a partnership with shared equity interests.

On June 8, Jensen Huang visited NAVER 1784 headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi-do, and met with NAVER chairman Lee Hae-jin. Less than two months later, this $1 billion strategic investment materialized, highlighting Nvidia’s sense of urgency to accelerate its transformation from “shovel seller” to “partner” in the Korean AI ecosystem.

Bundled Cancellation of Proprietary Stock Worth Trillions of KRW: A Bidirectional Signal of Control

While welcoming Nvidia as its third-largest shareholder, NAVER also announced that it will cancel 4.9 million shares of its own stock worth about 1 trillion KRW next month in order to enhance shareholder value. In the context of concerns over potential equity dilution due to private placement, this move sends a strong signal to the market that the management still firmly controls the capital rhythm.

For Nvidia, the cancellation of proprietary shares means a reduction in NAVER’s total share capital, which in the long run helps improve earnings per share and asset quality, thereby indirectly increasing the value of its 4.5% equity stake.

Brookfield’s $9 Billion Preliminary Contract: A Key Piece in AI Factory Financing

The preliminary contract between NAVER and Brookfield sets a maximum external financing cap of $9 billion for the AI factory construction project. According to the financing structure, Brookfield will provide up to the maximum investment, while NAVER will have to cover the rest, with NAVER's direct investment amount yet to be finalized.

The funds are expected to be fully allocated to the expansion of the “Gak Sejong” AI factory at the Sejong City data center. Against the backdrop of exponential growth in demand for large model training and inference, the density and scale of computing power at the data center have become the core competitive barrier for AI infrastructure. Brookfield’s involvement introduces crucial external financial leverage for this capital-intensive NAVER project.

Korea: A Pivotal Point in the Global AI Infrastructure Plan

As the operator of Nvidia’s “Global AI Infrastructure Plan,” Brookfield has included NAVER’s AI factory expansion project directly in its world investment portfolio. This is not an isolated case—Nvidia has been active in Korea recently: establishing an AI research center with KAIST, signing a $1.5 billion chip packaging deal with Amkor, and now advancing both equity and infrastructure financing with NAVER. South Korea is rapidly becoming one of the densest regions for Nvidia’s AI infrastructure layout in Asia.

For capital markets, NAVER’s AI transformation has secured dual endorsements from a global computing powerhouse and a top asset management firm. Whether Nvidia can replicate this “equity investment + infrastructure financing” model elsewhere—as it has in Korea—will be a key metric to observe in the next phase of its ecosystem expansion.