Nvidia to Invest $1 Billion in Naver and Expand SK Group Accord

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has sought to cultivate the AI industry with a series of big-budget deals. Photo by Kiyoshi Ota /Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomb

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(Bloomberg) — Nvidia Corp. will invest $1 billion in Naver Corp. to help finance an AI data center under construction in South Korea, adding to a frenzy of deals by the world’s most valuable company.

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The funding will allow Naver, an internet and cloud service provider, to more than triple the size of the facility, Nvidia said late Friday. The site — developed jointly with US private equity firm Brookfield Corp. — will use Nvidia’s artificial intelligence computing hardware.

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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.

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“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. You know, this is a country that has the ability to help the world build out the AI infrastructure.”

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Huang has funneled billions of dollars of investments into companies in every part of the AI supply chain. He’s aiming to accelerate the uptake of his products and eliminate roadblocks that threaten to slow the adoption of artificial intelligence. 

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The latest announcements, which build on existing partnerships with the two Korean companies, coincide with a visit by the nation’s leader to the US. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung is attending events in Silicon Valley, and additional tech deals are in the works.

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For Nvidia, closer ties with SK Group will help improve its access to computer memory chips. That company’s SK Hynix Inc. business and South Korean rival Samsung Electronics Co. are the two biggest providers of the crucial components — chips that are in short supply because of the global build-out of AI data centers.

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Nvidia will help Hynix design future high-bandwidth memory chips, an effort that will help guarantee access to supply, the US company said. In total, the “AI initiative” with SK Group will be worth more than $500 billion, Nvidia said.

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The figure includes money that Nvidia will spend buying memory chips, as well as purchases by SK Group of Nvidia’s supercomputers, Huang said in the interview. “So between us, we’re going to do half a trillion dollars’ worth of business,” he said.

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For the Naver project, Brookfield has agreed to a nonbinding term sheet to fund up to $9 billion.

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Huang has argued that investments in companies such as Anthropic PBC and OpenAI will help not only his business but provide an investment return. Critics have expressed concern that such moves represent an artificial inflation of demand, describing them as circular deals.