NAVER, Brookfield, NVIDIA expand Korea AI factory to 200 megawatts

The announcement represents a major step in South Korea's push to build sovereign AI infrastructure independent of foreign cloud giants. By partnering with Brookfield—a global infrastructure investor—and NVIDIA, NAVER is securing both the capital and the cutting-edge computing platform needed to scale from the initial 55-megawatt deployment to 200 megawatts. The deal was announced during Korea President Jae Myung Lee's AI Summit visit to San Francisco, underscoring the strategic importance Seoul places on AI competitiveness.

The three-way funding split—with Brookfield as the dominant capital partner, NVIDIA as both investor and technology provider, and NAVER covering the remaining share—aligns incentives across infrastructure development, semiconductor supply, and operator expertise. By positioning the facility as an open resource pool for emerging AI companies in both Korea and the U.S., NAVER is creating a regional alternative to hyperscalers that focus primarily on serving their own cloud services. The explicit mention of a longer-term path to gigawatt-scale infrastructure signals this is a foundation for much larger buildout.

NAVER's collaboration with NVIDIA on open model development, including its role as the first Korean company in the Nemotron Coalition, shows the partnership extends beyond raw compute: NAVER is helping shape the open-source AI model ecosystem while advancing its own HyperCLOVA X models. This positions South Korea as a center for both AI infrastructure and model innovation.