Shares of South Korea's Naver Corp (035420) jumped nearly 8% on Monday after the company announced that NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) will acquire $1 billion of newly issued Naver shares as part of a financing arrangement tied to an artificial intelligence data center project.
The stock move pushed Naver to its highest level since June 22, markedly outpacing the broader KOSPI benchmark, which fell about 1% during the same session.
Transaction and project details
According to a regulatory filing, Nvidia will purchase the freshly issued shares to support construction of the AI facility. The funding is intended to enable Naver to increase the size of the data center by more than threefold. The facility is being developed in partnership with Brookfield and will operate on Nvidia's AI computing systems.
This equity investment is described as a component of a broader strategic partnership announced by Nvidia last week. The initiative is aimed at accelerating deployment of AI infrastructure outside of the traditional hyperscale cloud providers.
Wider South Korea initiative
Separately, Nvidia disclosed an expanded collaboration with SK Group to develop over two gigawatts of AI data center capacity across South Korea. The initiative is expected to spur substantial commercial activity, with estimates in the announcement suggesting more than $500 billion of business related to purchases of memory chips and AI supercomputers.
The timing of these corporate moves coincides with a high-profile visit by South Korea's president to Silicon Valley and is presented as part of Nvidia's effort to broaden its investments across the AI supply chain and to support sovereign AI capability development.
Market context
The announcements underscore Nvidia's continuing capital deployment across AI infrastructure, spanning investments in startups, semiconductor suppliers and data center projects as part of an effort to expand adoption of its computing platform. Naver's share issuance to Nvidia is explicitly tied to financing the enlarged data center footprint that will run on Nvidia hardware and be developed with Brookfield.
While the financing and partnerships outline a clear roadmap for expansion, details on the precise timetable for construction and commercial ramp were not specified in the filing.