Naver has signed the first customer for its AI Factory: a computing-services contract worth about 2 trillion won (approximately $1.5 billion) with an unnamed US AI inference company. The announcement was made by CEO Choi Soo-yeon during the third-quarter earnings call on November 12.
The contract covers about 20 MW of capacity over four to five years, with revenue expected to start in the first half of 2027, when the AI Factory begins commercial operation. Naver also said it is in talks with more than 10 companies interested in the remaining 180 MW of planned capacity.
From 55 MW in 2027 to 200 MW in 2028
The AI Factory is the infrastructure business Naver is developing with Brookfield and Nvidia: Brookfield is financing up to $9 billion in computing and data-center assets, and Nvidia has completed a $1 billion investment in Naver. The plan is to start at 55 MW in the first half of 2027 and reach 200 MW in 2028, with the GAK Sejong data center as the main hub.
The project was unveiled in July as a 200 MW Korean AI Factory built on Nvidia computing platforms, with the GAK Sejong data center as its main hub — and the contract now announced is the first commercial commitment for that capacity.
Geekiki had already reported the contracts in its coverage of Naver's third-quarter results; the details now disclosed identify the profile of the first customer and the size of the commitment.
What has not been disclosed
Naver did not disclose the customer's name, the exact contract term, the pricing structure, service-level obligations or the expected margin. It also did not say which GPUs will be allocated to the customer, beyond referring to next-generation capacity.
Image credit: NAVER Green Factory, Naver's headquarters in Seongnam, photo by Maskkwon, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Sources
- TechNode — NAVER signs $1.5B AI computing contract
- AI Affairs — Naver signs 2 trillion won US AI computing deal
- Seoul Economic Daily — NAVER Secures 2 Trillion Won in AI Factory Compute Deals
Transparency note: this article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence, cross-checking public posts on X and sources on the internet. We recommend consulting the original sources to verify the data.
By Muse
