Brookfield Commits Up to $9 Billion to Expand South Korea's Sovereign AI Factory with NAVER and NVIDIA

Brookfield’s Strategic Commitment to Gigawatt-Scale AI Infrastructure Investment

Brookfield’s pledge of up to $9 billion in funding highlights a major commitment to the emerging AI infrastructure sector and reflects the firm’s confidence in sovereign AI computing as a strategic priority for countries competing in artificial intelligence development. This partnership showcases Brookfield’s capacity to mobilize substantial capital for next-generation infrastructure projects alongside leading technology companies and government-backed initiatives.

This investment aligns with Brookfield’s established presence in the AI infrastructure ecosystem. The company has built one of the industry’s foremost AI infrastructure investment platforms, managing roughly $100 billion in assets spanning data centers, compute infrastructure, semiconductor manufacturing, and dedicated power generation. Brookfield’s expertise across these sectors equips it to tackle the integrated infrastructure challenges required by gigawatt-scale AI factories.

Scaling NVIDIA DSX Platform at GAK Sejong Data Center

The expansion represents more than a threefold increase from the original 55-megawatt NVIDIA DSX deployment announced in June 2026. The upgraded infrastructure will be constructed using the NVIDIA DSX platform at NAVER’s GAK Sejong hyperscale data center in Sejong, South Korea. It will feature advanced NVIDIA AI technologies, including the NVIDIA Vera Rubin and NVIDIA Blackwell platforms, designed to enhance AI compute density and lower operational costs.

NAVER aims to grow its NVIDIA AI infrastructure deployment to 1 gigawatt, establishing a long-term growth path for sovereign AI capacity in South Korea. This scaling effort supports Korea’s enterprises, industries, government bodies, and global AI cloud customers by creating a dedicated resource pool for emerging AI companies. It will provide the compute power, software, and support infrastructure essential for developing and deploying competitive AI models and applications at scale.

Funding Structure and Partner Responsibilities

The partnership outlines clear funding roles: NVIDIA will invest $1 billion in NAVER Corp., subject to customary closing conditions; Brookfield will contribute up to $9 billion toward AI infrastructure development; and NAVER will finance the remaining project costs. This capital arrangement balances risk and leverages each partner’s expertise—NVIDIA’s accelerated computing technology, Brookfield’s infrastructure investment and operations proficiency, and NAVER’s data center management and AI technology capabilities.

The NVIDIA investment remains contingent on standard closing conditions, including regulatory approvals. The project aims for full completion of the 200-megawatt expansion by 2028, allowing a two-year period for infrastructure construction and equipment deployment.

Brookfield’s Established Presence and Expertise in South Korea

Brookfield has been an active investor in South Korea since 2014, with investments spanning infrastructure, real estate, and energy sectors. This longstanding presence provides Brookfield with local market insight, regulatory relationships, and infrastructure management experience critical to the AI factory expansion. The firm’s decade-long engagement in the region reinforces its credibility with Korean government entities and demonstrates a commitment to sustained infrastructure investment on the peninsula.

Sikander Rashid, Brookfield’s global head of AI infrastructure, emphasized that the partnership combines Brookfield’s global AI infrastructure investment capabilities with NAVER’s full-stack AI and data center operational expertise and NVIDIA’s accelerated computing platform to advance South Korea’s AI capabilities. This collaborative approach integrates capital, operational know-how, and technology platforms to scale infrastructure effectively in the AI era.

Government Support and South Korea’s National AI Strategy

The announcement coincided with South Korean President Jae Myung Lee’s visit to San Francisco, highlighting the infrastructure expansion as a key component of Korea’s national AI strategy. The 200-megawatt expansion is described as a major acceleration of Korea’s AI ambitions, with NAVER targeting gigawatt-scale sovereign AI infrastructure. The government-backed framing indicates strong policy support and aligns the project with Korea’s broader goals of developing autonomous AI capabilities free from foreign control.

The use of "sovereign AI infrastructure" terminology reflects geopolitical concerns regarding AI compute access and technological independence. By establishing Korean-controlled AI factory capacity, the project aims to reduce reliance on foreign cloud providers and foster domestic AI development pathways for Korean startups and enterprises. This approach aligns with global trends favoring distributed, regional AI infrastructure over centralized global cloud dependency.

Advanced NVIDIA DSX Platform and Software Integration

Brookfield’s investment will support the NVIDIA DSX platform, an end-to-end, co-designed stack for AI factories that spans chips, systems, software, facilities, and partner technologies. The platform is engineered to minimize token costs and accelerate time to first production. The NVIDIA DSX MaxLPS software maximizes token throughput per megawatt of power, addressing operational efficiency challenges crucial for gigawatt-scale deployments.

The NVIDIA DSX OS provides lifecycle management, health automation, resiliency, and multi-tenant AI factory management. Multi-tenant capability is vital to Brookfield’s investment thesis, enabling the facility to serve multiple AI companies simultaneously, thereby distributing utilization risk and revenue across a broader customer base. This model transforms the AI factory from a single-customer site into a shared utility.

NAVER’s AI Model Innovation and Open Source Partnership with NVIDIA

The expanded infrastructure supports NAVER’s AI development roadmap, including advancing HyperCLOVA X models based on NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra open models. This combines NVIDIA’s foundational technology with NAVER’s proprietary data and training expertise. NAVER is the first Korean company to join the NVIDIA Nemotron Coalition, contributing to open model development across pretraining, post-training, and reinforcement learning.

NAVER plans to launch an AI agent platform in Korea in the second half of 2026, powered by NVIDIA Agent Toolkit software and NVIDIA NemoClaw blueprints. Additionally, NAVER is developing a Seoul World Model leveraging proprietary urban street-view and spatial data, built on NVIDIA Cosmos world foundation models. These initiatives demonstrate the infrastructure investment’s direct support for NAVER’s generative AI product development and competitive positioning.

Brookfield’s Comprehensive AI Infrastructure Investment Strategy

The NAVER partnership is part of Brookfield’s broader AI infrastructure strategy. The firm manages approximately $100 billion in assets across the AI infrastructure value chain, providing capital capacity, operational expertise, and portfolio diversification across data centers, compute, semiconductor manufacturing, and dedicated power generation.

This investment builds on Brookfield’s strategic alliance with NVIDIA, which serves as a founding partner in the Brookfield Global AI Infrastructure Program. This program enables Brookfield to deploy capital across multiple global AI infrastructure projects with NVIDIA providing technical guidance and product integration. The partnership model is expected to be replicated across other regions and infrastructure initiatives.

Project Timeline and Market Implications

The 200-megawatt expansion is projected to be completed by 2028, with a two-year window for infrastructure construction. Specific commissioning schedules, phased capacity rollouts, or customer adoption rates have not been disclosed. Investors will likely monitor future updates for progress milestones and initial customer commitments that validate demand.

The facility’s provision of production-scale AI compute to both Korean and U.S.-based AI innovators indicates Brookfield anticipates transpacific demand. Serving enterprises across these geographies suggests the infrastructure will cater not only to Korean companies but also U.S. firms seeking alternative compute sources outside their domestic data center networks. This geographic arbitrage, leveraging South Korea’s power costs and NAVER’s operational expertise, may enhance the project’s financial returns.