Overview
On 25 July 2024, at the San Francisco AI Summit, South Korean technology company NAVER, semiconductor giant NVIDIA, and global asset manager Brookfield announced a $10 billion strategic partnership to build out South Korea’s sovereign AI infrastructure. The agreement centres on expanding NAVER’s existing AI factory at its GAK Sejong hyperscale data centre from 55 megawatts (MW) to 200 MW by 2028, with a long-term roadmap targeting 1 gigawatt (GW) of total compute capacity. This is one of the largest nationally focused AI infrastructure commitments announced outside the United States, and it signals a structural shift in how governments and private enterprises are approaching the ownership and control of high-performance computing resources.
The financial architecture of the deal is as significant as its technical ambition. Brookfield will contribute up to $9 billion as the exclusive capital partner through its Global AI Infrastructure Program. NVIDIA will make a direct $1 billion strategic equity investment in NAVER Corp, moving well beyond its traditional role as a hardware supplier. NAVER will fund the remaining balance and manage multi-tenant AI cloud operations across the facility. For technology strategists, this financing model is notable: it positions physical AI compute infrastructure alongside utility grids and toll roads as a yield-generating asset class attractive to institutional capital at scale.
For professional services firms operating across the Asia-Pacific region, including engineering consultancies, environmental advisors, law firms, and management consultants, this development has direct operational consequences. The shift toward sovereign, regionally localised AI infrastructure will alter where sensitive data is processed, how AI tools are procured and governed, and what obligations arise under data residency and privacy frameworks. Understanding the structure and trajectory of this partnership is no longer optional for firms advising on digital transformation, data governance, or technology procurement across the region.
Key details of the NAVER, NVIDIA, and Brookfield sovereign AI factory partnership
The expanded AI factory will deploy NVIDIA’s most advanced compute platforms, specifically the Blackwell and Vera Rubin architectures. These platforms are designed to support the training of next-generation large language models (LLMs) and the development of agentic AI workflows, where software systems execute complex, multi-step tasks autonomously without continuous human instruction. The progression from 55 MW to 200 MW represents more than a threefold increase in compute capacity, and the long-term 1 GW target would position South Korea’s sovereign AI infrastructure among the largest nationally controlled AI compute ecosystems in the world.
On the model development side, NAVER will transition its proprietary HyperCLOVA X language models to run on NVIDIA’s Nemotron 3 Ultra open-model framework. This transition preserves South Korea’s localised training data and linguistic specificity while allowing NAVER to use NVIDIA’s open-model ecosystem for performance and interoperability. The choice to migrate to an open framework rather than building entirely proprietary stacks reflects a broader industry recognition that foundation model performance increasingly depends on the quality of the underlying compute infrastructure and training data, not simply model architecture alone.
Two additional technical workstreams announced under the partnership deserve close attention. First, NAVER will deploy an enterprise-grade autonomous AI agent platform in the second half of 2024, built on the NVIDIA Agent Toolkit and NemoClaw blueprint frameworks. These tools are specifically designed for orchestrating multiple AI agents working in parallel across complex workflows, which has direct relevance for industries managing large volumes of structured and unstructured data. Second, NAVER is developing what it calls the Seoul World Model, built on NVIDIA’s Cosmos world foundation models. This initiative uses NAVER’s proprietary urban street-view and spatial data to develop physical and embodied AI applications, effectively creating a high-fidelity digital model of Seoul’s built environment for use in spatial intelligence and simulation tasks.
The involvement of Brookfield as the primary capital partner through its Global AI Infrastructure Program is a defining feature of this deal. Brookfield manages one of the largest real assets portfolios globally, with deep experience in energy infrastructure, utilities, and transport. Its participation signals that institutional investors now view AI compute facilities as infrastructure assets with comparable risk and return profiles to regulated utilities, meaning long-duration, capital-intensive projects with predictable cash flows from contracted tenants. This framing has significant implications for how similar projects will be financed across the Asia-Pacific region in coming years.
Australian context: sovereign AI infrastructure and its implications for Australian businesses and professional services
Australia does not yet have a sovereign AI infrastructure programme at the scale announced by South Korea, but the policy groundwork is being laid. The Australian Government’s 2023 National Reconstruction Fund and the 2024 AI and Digital Economy investments reflect growing recognition that compute sovereignty matters for national competitiveness and security. The NAVER-NVIDIA-Brookfield deal provides a concrete, costed blueprint for what a national AI factory looks like at scale, and it will inevitably inform discussions within Australian government, the tech sector, and major institutional investors about whether Australia should develop comparable infrastructure domestically or rely on access to regional hubs such as the GAK Sejong facility.
References and related sources
- Primary source: www.prnewswire.com
- streetinsider.com
- tucson.com
- economictimes.com
- industry-asia-pacific.com
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Published: 28 Jul 2026
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