Founder and board chair Lee Hae-jin met Brookfield Asset Management Chief Executive Bruce Flatt in Seoul on Thursday to review progress on a gigawatt-scale AI factory backed by up to $60 billion in investment.
The two met at Naver's 1784 headquarters in Seongnam, south of Seoul, to advance a project the company is pursuing with Nvidia to construct AI factories, facilities that bundle AI chips, servers, networking and software to train and run large models.
Brookfield, which manages more than $1 trillion in assets, has committed up to $9 billion to the first 200-megawatt phase.
"We aim to combine Brookfield's expertise in infrastructure investment with Naver's AI capabilities to lead the global AI infrastructure market," Lee said.
Flatt said Brookfield would act as more than a capital partner, helping with equipment procurement and customer acquisition, according to Naver.
The company said the partnership would continue through later phases of the project, which requires $60 billion in total to reach 1 gigawatt.
The financing marks the clearest sign yet that Naver intends to fund the full 1-gigawatt build-out, a scale that would rank among the region's most ambitious data-center undertakings.
Lee and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiled the AI factory plan in Seoul in June, and the Naver chief joined Samsung Electronics and SK Group leaders for a roundtable with Huang near Silicon Valley in July.
AJP Takeaways
- Naver and Brookfield Asset Management met in Seoul to advance a gigawatt-scale AI factory that Naver is building with Nvidia, part of a decade-long expansion of the South Korean firm's computing infrastructure.
- Brookfield, which manages more than $1 trillion in assets, has committed up to $9 billion to the project's first 200-megawatt phase, completing the full 1-gigawatt facility requires $60 billion.
- The buildout follows Naver's earlier data centers, Gak Chuncheon, opened in 2013, and the 270-megawatt Gak Sejong campus, opened in 2023, and ties into a partnership unveiled by Lee Hae-jin and Jensen Huang in Seoul in June 2026.
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