네이버가 브룩필드와 엔비디아로부터 100억 달러 규모의 투자를 유치했다. 이번 자금은 데이터센터 구축과 GPU 구매에 투입될 예정이다.

South Korean cloud provider Naver has secured billions of dollars in investment from Brookfield and Nvidia.

This week, the company announced a $9 billion agreement with investment giant Brookfield to secure computing infrastructure. Naver said the news means it has met the precondition for Nvidia's previously announced strategic equity investment.

The investment will bring the 1GW-scale global AI factory business that the three companies are jointly pursuing into the full-scale execution phase.

Under the agreement, Brookfield will establish a special purpose vehicle (SPV), tentatively named Asset Co., which will invest up to $9bn to acquire AI infrastructure, such as GPUs and data centers. The SPV will then provide computing power to Naver Cloud.

The first 55MW under this agreement is set to go live in the first half of 2027, scaling to 200MW in 2028. The capacity will be centered on the GAK Sejong data center and will be expanded overseas in phases.

Naver first announced plans for 55MW of Nvidia hardware in South Korea in June. In July, the three companies announced plans to scale Naver's initial multi-tenant DSX AI Factory to 200MW by 2028. As part of that announcement, Nvidia was to invest $1bn in Naver, and Brookfield was to invest $9bn.

Naver currently lists six cloud regions in South Korea, as well as one each in Japan, Germany, Singapore, and the US (West Coast). It also plans future regions in the US (East Coast), Vietnam, Taiwan, and Thailand, and is expanding into the Middle East and North Africa.

Construction at the company's Sejong site began in November 2023. The site spans 290,000 sqm (3.1 million sq ft) and is planned to reach 270MW of capacity, hosting up to 600,000 servers running Naver's cloud services. Work on the second and third phases is ongoing.