South Korea’s NAVER has signed a computing-services contract worth about 2 trillion won ($1.5 billion) with an unidentified US artificial intelligence inference company, securing an initial customer for its AI Factory infrastructure business.
NAVER disclosed the contract during its third-quarter earnings call on November 12. The company said the agreement covers next-generation graphics-processing capacity and represents about 20 megawatts of service demand, according to reports by Yonhap, Newsis and other Korean business publications.
NAVER’s official third-quarter earnings presentation said customer contracts had been signed for capacity scheduled to come online in early 2027. The presentation did not identify the customer or reproduce the contract’s detailed terms.
The company expects commercial service and associated revenue to begin in the first half of 2027. It said it is also discussing additional supply agreements with more than 10 prospective customers, including AI companies outside Asia.
AI Factory moves toward commercial service
The contract builds on NAVER’s infrastructure agreements with NVIDIA and Brookfield. NAVER previously said Brookfield would invest up to $9 billion through an infrastructure vehicle that would acquire graphics processors and data-center assets for NAVER Cloud to use.
Under that structure, the Brookfield-backed vehicle would own the computing assets and charge NAVER Cloud usage fees linked to business revenue. NAVER has agreed to guarantee its subsidiary’s usage-fee obligations for up to eight years, although the company said the guarantee does not itself create an immediate cash outflow.
NAVER plans to start its AI Factory at 55 megawatts in the first half of 2027 and expand to 200 megawatts by 2028. The company said it has secured data-center capacity beyond that 2028 target, although much of the capacity is not yet covered by disclosed customer contracts.
TNGlobal reported in July that NAVER, Brookfield and NVIDIA planned a 200-megawatt Korean AI Factory using NVIDIA computing platforms, with NAVER’s GAK Sejong data center as the main hub.
The new customer remains unnamed, and NAVER did not disclose the contract period, pricing structure, service-level obligations, cancellation terms or expected margin. It also did not say which graphics processors will be allocated to the customer beyond referring to next-generation capacity.
NAVER reported third-quarter enterprise revenue of 193.3 billion won, up 33 percent from a year earlier, while infrastructure expenses rose 29.1 percent. The company attributed part of the higher spending to computing assets and data-center rents.