Nvidia to become No. 3 shareholder as Naver pursues Brookfield-arranged financing for remaining $9 billion
Naver disclosed Monday that Nvidia will buy a 4.5 percent stake through a 1.48 trillion won ($1 billion) share sale, attaching binding terms to one part of the $10 billion AI infrastructure package the two companies unveiled with Canadian asset manager Brookfield in San Francisco last week.
The filing sets the issuance at 7,241,564 new common shares priced at 204,500 won each, roughly 1.4 percent below Friday's close, with payment due Oct. 30. It is Naver's first third-party share allocation since the company moved to the main Kospi board in 2008. It would also make Nvidia its third-largest shareholder after the National Pension Service and BlackRock.
The other $9 billion remains unsettled. Naver said it has selected Brookfield as its exclusive preferred negotiating partner to arrange computing infrastructure funding, likely through project financing, and that talks toward a formal contract are ongoing. The joint English statement issued by the three companies on July 24 described Brookfield's role as a nonbinding term sheet, and said Nvidia's investment is conditional on Naver first locking down at least $9 billion in committed financing separate from Nvidia's own money.
Naver added that the $9 billion is a projection through 2028 and that its own capital contribution has not been determined.
Alongside the issuance, Naver will retire 4.9 million treasury shares worth about 1.02 trillion won on Aug. 3, a decision its board made Friday. The cancellation covers roughly two-thirds of the new shares by count, though treasury stock carries no voting rights to begin with.
Investors welcomed the package. Naver traded at 227,500 won as of 11 a.m. on the Korea Exchange, up 9.64 percent, after touching 255,000 won earlier in the session. The stock had risen 14.43 percent this year through Friday, far behind the Kospi's 58.76 percent gain.
The money is earmarked for AI factories built on Nvidia's DSX platform at Naver's GAK Sejong data center, starting at 55 megawatts in the first half of 2027, reaching 100 megawatts by the end of that year and 200 megawatts in 2028, with a longer-term ambition of 1 gigawatt. Naver aims to begin booking revenue from the business in 2027, selling capacity to enterprise and government customers across Asia, Europe and the Middle East. It has not named any customers.
"The investment from Nvidia and Brookfield will be an important turning point for Naver's future growth," CEO Choi Soo-yeon said, adding the company would "wrap up customer acquisition for the AI factory business at pace."
Kim Dong-woo, an analyst at Kyobo Securities, wrote Monday that the venture marks Naver's entry into capital-intensive business-to-business operations, a departure from a company that had been reluctant to build data center capacity for outside clients.
Naver's commitment sits within the roughly $950 billion in Korea-US AI agreements the presidential office tallied from Friday's summit, where SK Group and Nvidia signed a letter of intent covering up to $500 billion and Samsung Electronics agreed a $200 billion supply arrangement with Broadcom.
mjh@heraldcorp.com