Naver, Nvidia to build global AI factories together

Naver is partnering with Nvidia to launch a global AI factory development project, the companies announced Monday.

The initiative aims to strengthen Naver's global competitiveness across the full AI ecosystem — spanning infrastructure, models and services — deepening what has already become a wide-ranging alliance between the two companies. Further details are expected after Naver Chairman Lee Hae-jin and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang meet in South Korea on Friday, with the partnership set to expand from physical AI into AI factory development.

Naver Cloud shared the direction of the collaboration Monday at the Nvidia Cloud Partner Summit in Taiwan.

"Naver Cloud has strong full-stack technology capabilities covering everything from AI infrastructure to services, making us a perfect fit for Nvidia's AI factory platform strategy, which encompasses energy, chips, infrastructure, models and applications," Naver Cloud CEO Kim Yu-won said.

Huang officially named Naver Cloud a key partner in the global AI ecosystem the previous day during his keynote at Nvidia's GTC Taipei 2026. He displayed the "Nvidia ♥ Naver Cloud" pairing — placing a heart symbol and the Nvidia logo next to Naver Cloud's name — to signal the closeness of the relationship.

At the core of the partnership is deep technical collaboration spanning AI infrastructure, AI models and physical AI.

Naver Cloud will use Nvidia's open-source large language model Nemotron 3 Ultra to advance its HyperCLOVA X model. The two companies also plan to jointly research optimization techniques and foundational technology for large language models.

Cooperation on physical AI is also intensifying. In March, Naver Cloud used Nvidia's physical AI platform Cosmos to release the Seoul World Model, a digital reconstruction of Seoul built from real-world data, and has been refining the model's performance since.

The model drew attention for reproducing South Korea's actual road environments and spatial structures, trained on 1.2 million panoramic images collected across Seoul using domestic map data.

"Our collaboration with Nvidia goes beyond a simple GPU supplier-customer relationship — it is a strategic decision to develop AI technology together and expand the global AI ecosystem," Kim said. "We will establish ourselves as a key supplier supporting the explosive growth of AI demand in the Asian market and as an unrivaled AI infrastructure hub."

Following their meeting in South Korea on Friday, the companies plan to formally unveil the detailed implementation plan for the global AI factory project on June 8. Huang will also visit Naver's second headquarters, "1784," in Bundang-gu, Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, that day.

The detailed cooperation plan expected June 8 is set to cover robotics and digital twin collaboration, commercialization of physical AI using Nvidia's platform, and upgrades to AI cloud and GPU infrastructure.