Naver wins $10 bil. investment from Nvidia, Brookfield
Naver's logo is seen at its headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province / Korea Times file
Naver, the country's leading internet portal operator, has received a combined $10 billion investment commitment from Nvidia and Canadian asset manager Brookfield to finance its project to build an artificial intelligence (AI) data center here.
With the funding, Naver, also a major cloud service provider, will be able to accelerate its project, according to Lee Hae-jin, founder and chairman of Naver, in an AI summit held in San Francisco on Friday (local time).
Earlier, Naver said it would work with Nvidia to build large-scale, global AI infrastructure, starting with an expansion of its data center in South Korea.
The expanded infrastructure will give South Korean and U.S. AI developers access to production-scale computing capacity to build next-generation AI models, agents and AI-powered services, Naver said in a press release.
Under the agreements, Brookfield will provide up to $9 billion as the exclusive capital partner, while Nvidia will invest $1 billion and Naver will provide the remaining funding for the $10 billion project, the company said.
"Leveraging the strong partnerships with our global partners, we will drive technological innovation, foster a sovereign AI ecosystem and spearhead efforts to strengthen South Korea's AI competitiveness," Lee said.