Nvidia will finance a Naver AI data center in South Korea and team up with SK Group on 2 GW of facilities, worth $500 billion in total business.
Nvidia Corp. will invest $1 billion in Naver Corp. to help finance an AI data center under construction in South Korea, adding to a string of deals by the world’s most valuable chipmaker.
The funding will let Naver more than triple the size of the facility, Nvidia said late Friday. The site, developed jointly with U.S. private equity firm Brookfield Corp., will use Nvidia’s artificial intelligence computing hardware.
Separately, Nvidia is teaming up with SK Group to build more than 2 gigawatts of AI data centers on the Korean Peninsula. That’s roughly the amount of energy needed to power 1.5 million homes. The first of these so-called AI factories, built by SK Telecom Co., will open next year, Nvidia said.
The announcements build on existing partnerships with the two Korean companies. They coincide with a visit by South Korean President Lee Jae Myung to Silicon Valley, where additional tech deals are in the works.
For Nvidia, closer ties with SK Group will improve access to computer memory chips. SK Hynix Inc., an SK Group affiliate, and Samsung Electronics Co. are the two biggest providers of high-bandwidth memory, which is in short supply because of the global AI build-out. Nvidia will help Hynix design future high-bandwidth memory chips, an effort that will help guarantee access to supply, the U.S. company said.
“This is the golden ages for Korea,” Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “Their semiconductor business is booming. Their industrial business is booming. This is a country that has the ability to help the world build out the AI infrastructure.”
In total, the “AI initiative” with SK Group will be worth more than $500 billion, Nvidia said. The figure includes money Nvidia will spend buying memory chips and purchases by SK Group of Nvidia’s supercomputers, Huang said. “So between us, we’re going to do half a trillion dollars’ worth of business,” he said.
For the Naver project, Brookfield has agreed to a nonbinding term sheet to fund up to $9 billion.
Huang has funneled billions into companies across the AI supply chain, including Anthropic and OpenAI. Some critics have described the investments as circular deals that artificially inflate demand.
Nvidia shares fell 0.86% to $206.96 on Friday, giving it an Alpha Score of 73 out of 100, a Moderate rating, according to AlphaScala data. The NVDA stock page tracks the company’s performance. SK Telecom Co., which is building the first AI factory, is unscored by AlphaScala.
The first SK Telecom AI factory is scheduled to open next year, Nvidia said.
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