Nvidia Buys 4.5% of Naver for $1B in AI Factory Deal

Nvidia Takes 4.5% of Naver for $1 Billion and a Gigawatt Roadmap

A third-party share allotment makes the chipmaker Korea's dominant internet company's third-largest shareholder, tied to an AI campus that starts at 55 megawatts and is meant to reach a gigawatt.

Naver disclosed to the Korea Exchange on Monday morning that Nvidia will take a 4.5% stake in the company through a third-party share allotment, becoming its third-largest shareholder.

The mechanics

Nvidia buys 7,241,564 newly issued shares at ₩204,500 each — ₩1.48 trillion, roughly $1 billion. Payment is due October 30 and the new shares list on November 20. Naver stock jumped 22.9% in pre-market trade to ₩255,000 and held a gain of about 7.7% through the morning session.

What the money builds

The two will jointly build what they call a global AI factory, expanding Naver's GAK Sejong data center on a staged ramp: 55 megawatts in the first half of 2027, 100 MW by the end of 2027, 200 MW by 2028, and one gigawatt over the longer term, with expansion into Europe and the Middle East flagged for later.

The $10 billion that is not Nvidia's

A pre-report on July 25 framed this as Naver securing $10 billion from Nvidia and Brookfield. That is not what was disclosed. Nvidia's equity is $1 billion; the remaining roughly $9 billion is a separate and unsettled project-financing tranche for which Brookfield is exclusive arranger. Treating the two as one committed sum overstates the deal tenfold.

Not part of the summit package

This is also distinct from the $950 billion of Korea-US chip commitments announced on July 24. Naver was not in that package; this is a separate, definitively disclosed equity transaction filed with the exchange.

Supplier becomes shareholder

Nvidia has spent the year converting sales relationships into ownership positions — in neoclouds, in national champions, and now in the company that runs Korea's search, commerce and messaging layer. The customer's capacity plan and the supplier's revenue plan are now the same document.

Why It Matters

Nvidia moving from supplying Korea to owning a slice of its dominant internet company extends the equity-for-infrastructure playbook into sovereign-adjacent territory, and gives Naver a build-out timetable it could not have financed alone.