Betting on South Korean AI infrastructure! Nvidia invests $1 billion in equity, becoming NAVER’s third largest shareholder

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NVIDIA's move in the landscape of AI infrastructure in South Korea is shifting from partnership promises at Jensen Huang's dinner table to tangible equity stakes backed by real capital.

On July 27, NAVER announced that it had signed an investment contract with NVIDIA through a private placement to a third party. NVIDIA will acquire a 4.5% stake in NAVER for $1 billion (about 1.48 trillion KRW), becoming its third-largest shareholder. At the same time, NAVER also signed a preparatory contract with global asset manager Brookfield for up to $9 billion in AI factory fundraising, to be used for its Sejong City data center expansion.

This marks the first time in a core Asian AI market that NVIDIA has entered a local internet platform as a strategic shareholder—the computing power giant is no longer content with just delivering chips, but is directly embedding its balance sheet into the expansion track of downstream AI infrastructure.

From Supplying GPUs to a 4.5% Stake: NVIDIA "Anchoring" Its Korean Ecosystem

Private placements to third parties are typically used to bring in strategic partners or inject capital quickly. NAVER chose this method to bring in NVIDIA, aiming to upgrade the relationship from merely buying and selling computing power to a shared interest at the equity level.

On June 8, Jensen Huang visited NAVER 1784 headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, and met with NAVER chairman Lee Hae-jin. Less than two months later, this $1 billion strategic investment was finalized, showing NVIDIA's urgency in accelerating its shift from "shovel seller" to "partner" in South Korea's AI ecosystem.

Tied to Cancellation of Trillion KRW Worth of Treasury Shares: A Two-Way Signal on Control

While welcoming NVIDIA as its third-largest shareholder, NAVER announced it would cancel about 4.9 million treasury shares worth around 1 trillion KRW next month to enhance shareholder value. Against the backdrop of concerns over equity dilution from a private placement, this move signals to the market that management still firmly controls the pace of capital management.

For NVIDIA, the cancellation of treasury shares means NAVER's total share base will shrink, which in the long term helps increase earnings per share and asset quality, indirectly boosting the value of its 4.5% stake.

Brookfield’s $9 Billion Preparatory Contract: A Key Piece of AI Factory Financing

The preparatory contract between NAVER and Brookfield sets an external financing cap of up to $9 billion for the AI factory construction project. According to the financing structure, Brookfield will provide up to this amount, with the rest to be raised by NAVER itself; NAVER’s direct investment amount has not yet been finalized.

This funding is expected to be fully invested in the expansion of the "Gak Sejong" AI factory at the Sejong City data center. With rapidly rising large-model training and inference demands, data center computing power density and scale have become a core competitive barrier for AI infrastructure. Brookfield’s entry brings in critical external financial leverage for this capital-intensive NAVER project.

South Korea: A Pivot Point for the Global AI Infrastructure Plan

As the operator for NVIDIA’s "Global AI Infrastructure Plan," Brookfield has directly incorporated NAVER’s AI factory expansion project into its global investment portfolio. This is not an isolated case—NVIDIA has been making frequent moves in South Korea: establishing an AI research center with KAIST, signing a $1.5 billion chip packaging agreement with Amkor, and now advancing both equity and infrastructure financing with NAVER. South Korea is becoming one of the densest areas in NVIDIA’s Asian AI infrastructure deployment.

For capital markets, NAVER’s AI transformation has gained dual endorsements from both a computing power giant and a top asset management firm. Whether NVIDIA can replicate the "equity investment + infrastructure financing" playbook in other regions as it has in Korea will be a key dimension to watch in assessing the pace of its ecosystem expansion.

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