Naver, SK Telecom, and Samsung SDS Accelerate AI Business Expansion

Naver Secures $10 Billion in Investment Support
SK Telecom Pursues 2GW AI Data Center Construction
Samsung SDS Forms Strategic Partnership with Anthropic

Korean companies are accelerating the expansion of their artificial intelligence (AI) businesses, including scaling up AI data centers.

Lee Hae-jin, Chairman of the Board of Directors at Naver, is speaking at the "San Francisco AI Summit" held at The Midway in San Francisco, USA, on the 24th (local time), attended by President Lee Jae-myung. Photo by Yonhap News Agency

Lee Hae-jin, chairman of the board at Naver, announced at an AI-related event held in San Francisco, USA, on the 24th (local time), that the company will receive investment support totaling 10 billion dollars (approximately 14.63 trillion won) from Nvidia and global alternative asset manager Brookfield.

Naver plans to use this investment to expand its AI and data center businesses. Lee stated, "The key challenge for Naver has been how to scale up our accumulated knowledge and operational know-how," adding, "The capital, global branding, and network of both companies will offer a huge opportunity to scale up Naver's expertise."

Naver will attract 1 billion dollars (about 1.46 trillion won) in investment from Nvidia and expand both supply and technological cooperation for graphic processing units (GPUs). From Brookfield, Naver will secure up to 9 billion dollars (around 13.17 trillion won) in support to build global AI factories. Together with Brookfield, Naver will jointly establish a stable infrastructure and supply chain—including data centers, power, and cooling facilities—required for operating gigawatt (GW)-scale AI factories.

Naver is also pursuing AI factory cooperation with Nvidia, covering areas from AI computing infrastructure to AI models and enterprise services.

SK Telecom and Samsung SDS have also begun efforts to expand their AI infrastructure and enterprise AI businesses. Domestic firms and global big tech companies have agreed to work together on AI data center investment involving approximately 5GW of power capacity and around 2 million Nvidia B200 GPUs.

SK Telecom is pursuing the construction and expansion of AI data centers with Nvidia, with capacities of up to 2GW. The companies have agreed on the priority allocation of Nvidia's latest Vera Rubin system GPUs. SK Telecom is also partnering with Anthropic to invest in and collaborate on GW-scale AI data center projects.

Samsung SDS has entered into a strategic partnership with Anthropic to expand its Claude-based enterprise AI business. On the same day, Samsung SDS announced that it had signed a strategic partnership contract with Anthropic to grow the domestic enterprise AI market.

Under the agreement, the two companies will jointly explore new business opportunities in the Korean market and support AI adoption and utilization for enterprises. Specifically, they plan to bolster their efforts in the domestic enterprise AI market through joint marketing, proof of concept (PoC), and collaborative business initiatives. They will also run a specialized AI engineer training program, overseeing everything from Claude service planning to deployment, operation, and technical support.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.