Brookfield to invest $9bn in Naver AI factory, unlocking Nvidia's $1bn stake

Naver has closed a $9 billion infrastructure agreement with Brookfield, clearing the way for Nvidia's $1 billion equity investment in the South Korean cloud provider. The deal puts the three companies' planned 1GW-scale global AI factory business into full-scale execution.

Naver announced the agreement this week. The company said the deal satisfies the precondition for Nvidia's previously announced strategic equity investment, which was first outlined in July.

How the structure works

Brookfield will establish a special purpose vehicle, tentatively named Asset Co. The SPV will invest up to $9 billion to acquire AI infrastructure, including GPUs and data centers. It will then provide computing power to Naver Cloud.

The structure separates asset ownership from service delivery. Brookfield funds and holds the hardware. Naver Cloud buys the resulting compute capacity.

What capacity arrives, and when?

The rollout follows a set timetable:

• The first 55MW goes live in the first half of 2027.
• Capacity scales to 200MW in 2028.
• The build centers on the GAK Sejong data center, with phased expansion overseas.

Naver first announced plans for 55MW of Nvidia hardware in South Korea in June. In July, Naver, Nvidia and Brookfield jointly announced plans to scale Naver's multi-tenant DSX AI Factory to 200MW by 2028. Nvidia committed $1 billion to Naver as part of that arrangement, with Brookfield committing $9 billion.

The Sejong site behind the plan

Construction at Sejong began in November 2023. The site spans 290,000 sqm (3.1 million sq ft) and is planned to reach 270MW of capacity. It is designed to host up to 600,000 servers running Naver's cloud services. Work on the second and third phases is ongoing.

The site gives the Brookfield-financed capacity a physical anchor. Sejong can absorb the initial Korean deployments while the overseas phases take shape.

What does this change for Naver's footprint?

Naver currently operates six cloud regions in South Korea. It runs one region each in Japan, Germany, Singapore and the US West Coast. Planned future regions include the US East Coast, Vietnam, Taiwan and Thailand, and the company is expanding into the Middle East and North Africa.

The Brookfield funding removes the capital constraint on that expansion. Naver gains access to GPU capacity at gigawatt scale without carrying the full hardware cost on its own balance sheet, and Nvidia secures a committed buyer for its silicon inside an AI factory that reaches from Korea outward.

For the broader market, the deal shows how AI compute buildouts are now financed: infrastructure funds own the assets, chipmakers take equity positions in the customers, and cloud operators contract for the power that results.