South Korean Tech Giant Naver Receives $1 Billion Investment from NVIDIA to Expand AI Data Center, Stock Rises Over 8%

South Korea's leading internet and cloud computing service provider Naver saw its stock price soar over 8% on Monday (27th), following the announcement that NVIDIA will invest $1 billion by subscribing to newly issued shares. The funds will support a project to expand Naver's artificial intelligence data center.

The investment was unveiled during South Korean President Lee Jae-myung's visit to the AI summit in San Francisco, highlighting NVIDIA's strategic intent to actively expand beyond the U.S. market.

Naver's stock performed strongly on Monday, rising over 10% intraday and closing up 8.43% at 234,500 Korean won.

According to Naver's regulatory filings, NVIDIA will purchase 7.2 million newly issued shares at 204,500 Korean won per share (approximately $139.45). This price represents a roughly 1% discount from Naver's closing price on the previous Friday. Upon completion, NVIDIA will hold approximately 4.5% of Naver, becoming one of its major shareholders, behind only the National Pension Service of Korea (9.25%) and BlackRock (6.12%).

The capital will be used to expand the GAK Sejong AI data center located in Sejong City, South Korea. The total project investment reaches $10 billion, with Brookfield Asset Management joining as a capital partner, providing up to $9 billion in financing alongside NVIDIA's contribution.

The facility will deploy NVIDIA's most advanced Vera Rubin and Blackwell chip systems, delivering production-scale AI computing power to South Korean enterprises, startups, and government agencies. The center's power capacity is expected to increase from the current 55 megawatts (MW) to 200 megawatts (MW) by 2028.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang emphasized the importance of countries building and controlling their own AI infrastructure—what he calls the 'Sovereign AI' strategy. He predicted that as this vision unfolds, Naver's scale could grow tenfold. Naver stated that a 1-gigawatt (GW) infrastructure could simultaneously house hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA's latest GPUs, significantly enhancing South Korea's ability to develop next-generation AI models.

This collaboration extends a partnership agreement reached in June, when NVIDIA previously teamed up with several Korean firms including SK Hynix, SK Telecom, and Doosan to strengthen South Korea's AI infrastructure competitiveness across the Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Middle East regions.