South Korea's Naver jumps 10% on Nvidia's $1.2b investment plan
A general view of the Naver sign on its office building in Seongnam, South Korea, May 13, 2022. Picture taken May 13, 2022.
PHOTO: Reuters file
SEOUL — Shares of South Korean internet and cloud service giant Naver jumped more than 10 per cent on Monday (July 27) after it said Nvidia would acquire US$1 billion (S$1.2 billion) of its new shares to finance a project to expand an AI data centre.
The move underscores a deepening partnership between the two companies, which in June announced plans to build global AI infrastructure to tap demand for sovereign AI in the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and the Middle East.
As the first step, the two firms and investment group Brookfield announced on Friday plans to expand Naver's AI data centre in South Korea with up to US$10 billion in funding.
Naver said on Monday it will place 7.2 million new shares with Nvidia for 204,500 won each, or a one per cent discount to its closing price on Friday, as part of the agreement.
Brookfield will provide up to $9 billion in financing as the project's capital partner, Naver added.
With the investment, Nvidia would become one of the biggest shareholders of Naver, owning a 4.5 per cent stake.
The National Pension Service was the biggest shareholder of Naver with a 9.25 per cent stake, followed by BlackRock Fund Advisors with 6.12 per cent as of end-2025.
The expansion will be built at Naver's GAK data centre in the city of Sejong in South Korea, using Nvidia's Vera Rubin and Blackwell chip platforms, and it will have a capacity of 200 megawatts by 2028.
In June, Naver and Nvidia announced an agreement to jointly pursue the development of gigawatt-scale global AI infrastructure in South Korea and overseas.
When the deal was announced, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Naver would be 10 times larger once the vision was realised.
One gigawatt is about four times the maximum capacity of GAK Sejong, South Korea's largest hyperscale data centre operated by Naver. It represents a scale capable of accommodating hundreds of thousands of Nvidia's latest GPUs at once, Naver said.
Huang has argued that nations should build and control their own AI infrastructure, a strategy that could broaden Nvidia's customer base beyond major US hyperscalers.
Nvidia has invested in AI, cloud and other companies, including a US$30 billion investment in OpenAI and a US$10 billion investment in Anthropic.
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