SEOUL, July 27 (Reuters) – Shares of South Korean internet and cloud service giant Naver jumped more than 10% on Monday after it said Nvidia would acquire $1 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 $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 1% 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% stake. The National Pension Service was the biggest shareholder of Naver with a 9.25% stake, followed by BlackRock Fund Advisors with 6.12% 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 U.S. hyperscalers.
Nvidia has invested in AI, cloud and other companies, including a $30 billion investment in OpenAI and a $10 billion investment in Anthropic.
(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Additional reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by Miyoung Kim and Jamie Freed)