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What Naver and SK Telecom Really Earn From AI Data Centers

Sun, 25 Oct 2026 20:20:00 +0900

Our last post sorted out what Naver and SK Telecom have really secured: plans, orders, deliveries and money. This post asks the next question. If the projects work, how much profit do they add by 2029? And how much of that profit belongs to each company’s shareholders?

Every number below is our own estimate from public filings and company releases up to October 25, 2026. It is not company guidance. We show earnings, shares of value and conditions to watch. We do not give price targets or buy and sell calls.

Five things to take away

Naver’s AI data center adds little profit before 2028. In our base case it earns ₩32bn of operating profit in 2027, ₩314bn in 2028 and ₩558bn in 2029. That is 1.3%, 10.7% and 16.3% of Naver’s total operating profit in our model.
A higher GPU rental price does not flow straight to profit. Rental prices for H200 and B200 chips rose about 20% in a month. Our model has Naver pay usage fees to a separate company that holds the data center assets, so the extra price helps Naver only after those fees.¹
SK Telecom’s AI data center revenue grows faster than the profit its shareholders keep. In our base case, related revenue rises from ₩850bn to ₩1.85tn between 2027 and 2029. Profit that belongs to SK Telecom shareholders rises from ₩31bn to ₩154bn, only 3.7% to 8.3% of revenue.
Most of each company’s value sits elsewhere. The new AI data center is about a tenth of Naver’s value in our base model. For SK Telecom, the telecom business, a stake in Anthropic and the existing data center unit matter more than the new GPU and gigawatt projects.
The US neocloud sell-off is a weak guide. US AI cloud stocks fell 33% to 39% from September 30 to October 23. Naver and SK Telecom fell 11% to 13%. After the US stocks rose, Naver rose in the next Korean session 4 times out of 8 and SK Telecom 3 times out of 8.

1. How we turn plans into profit

We start from company targets and turn them into revenue in three steps. First, how many megawatts (MW) of capacity are available on average during the year. Second, how much of that capacity is used by paying outside customers. Third, how much one contracted megawatt earns in a year.

For Naver, the company’s roadmap is 55MW from the first half of 2027, about 100MW by the end of 2027 and 200MW in 2028.²³ The monthly start dates are not public. We assume capacity averages 40MW in 2027, 150MW in 2028 and 200MW in 2029. We do not add the later 1GW expansion.

Our base case for Naver	2027	2028	2029
Average available capacity	40MW	150MW	200MW
Share of capacity in use	80%	85%	90%
Share of that use by outside paying customers	75%	80%	85%
Outside paying capacity	24MW	102MW	153MW
Revenue per contracted MW a year	$20m	$19m	$18m
Operating margin after SPV fees and running costs	5%	12%	15%
Outside revenue	₩648bn	₩2.62tn	₩3.72tn

We use ₩1,350 per dollar. Our price path starts from a reference point. Nebius said four large contracts it signed in the second quarter yield $20 million to $25 million per megawatt a year.⁴ That is Nebius’s contract data, not Naver’s price.

The margin is our assumption. Naver has not published a margin for this business or the terms of its costs. We treat 5%, 12% and 15% as the margin left after the usage fees Naver pays to the separate company that holds the data center assets (an SPV), power, staff and other running costs. We do not subtract those fees a second time. The real fee terms are not public.

2. Naver: little profit before 2028

The profit comes late for three reasons. In 2027 the average capacity is only 40MW, because the first 55MW starts in the middle of the year. The margin is thin while the business is new. And only part of the capacity serves outside customers. Naver’s own use of its AI computing does not create outside revenue in this model.

By 2028 the data center adds about 10.7% to Naver’s operating profit in our base case. By 2029 it adds about 16.3%, but only if 200MW runs at 90% use with a 15% margin. The bear case is a small loss of ₩5bn in 2027 and a profit of ₩78bn in 2029. The bull case has ₩1.12tn in 2029. We do not attach probabilities to these cases.

One outside estimate shows how much the margin matters. NH Investment & Securities expects AI Factory revenue of ₩0.73tn in 2027, ₩3.32tn in 2028 and ₩6.51tn in 2029, with operating margins of 5.3%, 6.9% and 8.8%.⁵ That gives ₩575bn of operating profit in 2029, close to our ₩558bn. Its revenue is higher partly because it assumes 300MW of capacity in 2029, which is NH’s assumption and not a Naver target. A higher revenue and a lower margin lead to about the same profit.

The cost side can also turn negative. Suppose Naver pays the SPV a fixed fee of $13m per megawatt a year, with $1.2m of variable cost and $1m of other cost, and sells at $18m. Then the business needs about 83% use just to cover its cash costs. At 60% use on 200MW, the yearly cash gap is about ₩1.06tn. This is a stress example, not a contract term. The real fee terms and minimum payments are not public.

3. GPU prices rose, but who keeps the gain?

Rental prices for GPUs are strong. The Ornn index of traded prices on October 24 showed a one-month rise of 20.2% for H200 and 19.5% for B200. H100 rose 3.4%, A100 5.9%, and the RTX PRO 6000 was flat.¹ Investor a16z published a chart on October 23 that compares today’s rental prices with a straight-line six-year depreciation line. Prices sit from 9% to 143% above that line, depending on the chip.⁶ That is a gap to a reference line, not a return on a chip.

We tested what a higher price path does. We raised revenue per contracted megawatt from $20m, $19m and $18m to $25m, $25m and $23m. If Naver kept the same margin, 2028 operating profit would rise from ₩314bn to ₩413bn. If Naver kept 30 cents of every extra revenue dollar as profit, instead of the 12 cents its margin implies, it would be ₩562bn.

There are two reasons not to push this further. First, Nebius separates its contract yield of $20m to $25m from a premium price range of $40m to $50m per megawatt, and says it had signed only the first contract in that range.⁴ A premium for scarce new chips does not set a three-year price. Second, Naver does not own the whole stack. If the SPV raises its fee when customer prices rise, Naver’s profit barely moves. The profit that counts is extra customer revenue minus extra fees and extra running cost.

4. Naver’s other swing factors

The existing business is the larger swing. In the second quarter, revenue excluding the Wallapop acquisition grew 14.5%, platform revenue grew 12.3% and advertising grew 7.5%. Operating profit was flat from a year earlier, as spending on computing assets, content and data rose.⁷ Our base case slows the existing business to 8%, 7% and 6% growth. A faster path of 12%, 10% and 8% is reasonable but not our base case. Korea Investment & Securities pointed to delays in tenant announcements, a slower advertising and commerce quarter around the Chuseok holiday, and higher costs for payment terminals, broadcast rights and GPU depreciation.⁸

One more point sets the scale. In our model, one turn of the earnings multiple on Naver’s existing business moves value by about ₩2.0tn. That is about 60% of the value of the whole AI data center (about ₩3.2tn). A one-turn change on the old business is worth more than half of the new project.

Dunamu adds profit to Naver’s group, but not all of it to Naver’s shareholders. Naver Financial plans to take 100% of the crypto exchange operator Dunamu in a share exchange. Naver’s holding in Naver Financial would fall from 69.0% to 17.0%. Naver would hold 46.5% of the voting rights including delegated votes, and plans to keep consolidating Naver Financial and, through it, Dunamu. The final control test comes at closing. The deal values 100% of Dunamu at ₩15.1tn. That is a share value, not cash coming to Naver. The chart is dated September 30, 2025, and the holdings can change if shareholders use appraisal rights.⁹

The arithmetic for shareholders is simple. Naver’s yearly gain is 17% of Dunamu’s net profit minus the 52 percentage points of Naver Financial’s own profit it gives up. Dunamu earned ₩708.9bn in 2025.¹⁰ Naver Financial’s own profit is about ₩133.5bn by our proxy from a secondary summary of its audit report. With those numbers the gain is about ₩51bn a year. But Dunamu earned only ₩108.4bn in the first half of 2026.¹¹ Doubling that number turns the gain into a loss of about ₩33bn. Dunamu would need to earn about ₩408bn a year for the swap to add to Naver’s profit. We did not find a confirmed closing in the filings we checked. Our model assumes the end of March 2027 and adds no synergy from stablecoins, payments or tokenization.

5. SK Telecom: revenue grows faster than shareholder profit

SK Telecom’s AI data center business is not one business. It combines three parts. SK Horizon owns existing data centers and subsea cables, and is being split off with outside investors. GPU services rent computing to customers. SK Hyper develops new gigawatt-scale sites. SK Telecom reported AI data center revenue of ₩131.4bn in the first quarter of 2026 and ₩136.2bn in the second.¹²

Our base case, ₩bn	2027	2028	2029
Horizon revenue / operating margin	550 / 25%	700 / 27%	900 / 28%
GPU services revenue / operating margin	300 / 8%	550 / 12%	850 / 15%
SK Hyper fees / operating profit	0 / −15	0 / −25	100 / 20
Total revenue	850	1,250	1,850
Total operating profit	146	230	400
Profit to SK Telecom shareholders	31	59	154
Share of SK Telecom’s total operating profit	7.4%	11.0%	17.5%
Share of SK Telecom’s shareholder profit	2.3%	4.1%	10.0%

Three things pull shareholder profit far below operating profit. First, Horizon’s revenue and operating profit are counted in full, but after the deal SK Telecom keeps only 51% of its net profit. KKR and a group led by IMM Investment pay about ₩3.08tn for the rest. Of that, about ₩1.88tn buys existing shares from SK Telecom and about ₩1.2tn is new money for Horizon. The sale is planned for March 4, 2027, subject to conditions.¹³¹⁴ Second, interest and tax come before shareholders. Third, GPU services start with a low margin, and SK Hyper starts as a cost.

Compared with our 2026 estimate of about ₩53bn of shareholder profit from this business, 2027 is lower by about ₩21bn. Revenue can grow while the profit a shareholder can claim falls in the first year. The ₩1.88tn from selling existing shares is cash, not profit. We treat it as capital that SK Telecom can reuse, and we do not add it to earnings.

SK Hyper is still mostly a plan. SK Telecom may invest up to ₩750bn by 2030 for sites and substations. The first 5GW is planned in phases from 2029, and the company says it plans to expand toward 15GW in 2035.¹⁵ In an October 13 filing, the company said it has no concrete plan to add another 5GW overseas, after a news report said it was considering one.¹⁶ We include no computing revenue from the 5GW. We include only an assumed ₩100bn of development and operating fees in 2029.

6. A token gateway: an option, not in our base case

On October 25, ZDNet Korea reported that SK Telecom is preparing a “token gateway.” The service would manage which AI model a customer uses, how much it uses and what it costs, and would set what work the AI may handle. It would use SK Telecom’s identity, payment and billing capabilities. The article says the company has not set a launch date or prices.¹⁷

This idea deserves attention because it adds demand without owning more GPUs. It also faces a hard question. Similar services already exist. Amazon Bedrock routes requests between models in the same model family, and Cloudflare AI Gateway offers usage logs, caching, rate limits, retries and model fallback.¹⁸¹⁹ SK Telecom would have to show an edge in business integration, access control, support and switching costs. ZDNet cites SK Telecom’s 23 million subscribers as an asset. They are telecom customers, and nothing shows they will pay for AI services.

We put zero value on it in our base case. To see the size, we tested two cases. In the proof case, 500,000 consumers pay ₩120,000 a year and 1,000 companies pay ₩50m, for ₩110bn of net fee revenue. In the expansion case, 1 million consumers pay ₩180,000 and 3,000 companies pay ₩100m, for ₩480bn. At 25% to 30% margins and a 20 times earnings multiple, discounted at 12%, these cases add ₩0.29tn and ₩1.51tn. That is about 1.5% and 7.7% of our base value. These cases are not company forecasts. Token purchases that SK Telecom passes on to model makers would not count as its own revenue.

7. Where the value sits

Naver. About 10% of base value comes from the new AI data center, or 12% to 14% under the higher price paths. Of that part, 82% is value after 2029. Only 18% comes from earnings and cash in 2027 to 2029. That makes the AI part sensitive to renewals, equipment replacement and whether profits last. Naver’s existing business, and the multiple the market gives it, matter more.

SK Telecom. About 69% of base value comes from telecom and other existing business. SK Horizon accounts for about 14%, and the cash from the share sale for about 7%. The Anthropic stake adds about 12%. SK Telecom holds 3,860,330 shares, rounded to 0.2%, with a book value of ₩3.5tn at the end of June.²⁰ We count it at 65% of book value because it is unlisted, can be diluted and is hard to cash out. A book-value gain is not cash. The new GPU services and SK Hyper together are slightly negative after we subtract the capital they need.

SK Telecom’s first half gives a baseline. Operating profit was ₩1.10tn on revenue of ₩8.75tn. Second-quarter mobile revenue fell 1.9% from a year earlier on fewer subscribers, and the strong profit growth reflects the base effect from last year’s USIM replacement costs.²¹ The company paid a dividend of ₩830 per share in each of the first two quarters of 2026. It has not promised the same for later quarters.

8. Did the US neocloud sell-off drag them down?

Possibly in part, but the evidence does not show it was the main cause. Reuters reported on October 14 that bets on higher US interest rates deepened concerns about the financing of AI infrastructure companies.²² On October 19, the Dong-A Ilbo tied Naver’s funding plan to CoreWeave’s debt worries. It reported, citing industry sources, a draft plan to raise up to $9bn (about ₩12tn) from outside investors who would earn about 9% a year over six years. Naver told the paper that the structure was still under discussion and that its fundamentals differ from CoreWeave’s.²³ That is a plausible path from US stocks to Naver, and it is not a confirmed contract.

The prices say the link is loose. Naver fell about the same as Kakao and less than the KOSPI, so neoclouds alone do not explain the fall. Following US days when CoreWeave and Nebius rose, Naver rose in the next Korean session 4 times out of 8 and SK Telecom 3 times out of 8. On October 19 the US basket rose 1.2%, and Naver fell 2.7% on October 20. The correlation is positive, at +0.32 for Naver and +0.42 for SK Telecom in the last month. After we remove the Korean market and the Nasdaq-100 ETF (QQQ), it drops to between +0.06 and +0.26 for Naver and between +0.13 and +0.23 for SK Telecom. Eight observations cannot give a probability.

A US rebound would help only in some forms. A bounce after oversold trading proves little. A fall in interest rates and credit spreads, together with Naver’s financing close and customer contracts, would prove more. Even a 20% rise in the value of Naver’s AI data center would raise our total value for Naver by only about 2.4% to 2.9%, if nothing else changed.

9. What would change our view

What to check	Why it matters
Nvidia’s $1bn share payment for Naver (latest date October 30) and the Brookfield financing close²⁴²⁵	Turns conditional money into money received
Naver’s first outside customers, the length of the contracts, minimum payments and the SPV fee	Decides whether a higher GPU price reaches Naver’s profit
The month Naver’s first 55MW starts and Naver’s next earnings	Tests our 2027 capacity and margin assumptions
SK Telecom’s Horizon shareholder meeting, split and share sale (planned January to March 2027)	Decides the 51% stake and the cash
SK Hyper’s outside investors, SK Telecom’s guarantees and any minimum lease obligations	Shows how much risk stays with SK Telecom
SK Telecom’s third-quarter AI data center revenue, margin and capital spending, and its 2027 shareholder return policy	Tests our ₩850bn revenue and 3.7% profit ratio
Whether the token gateway launches, with prices and paying customers	Turns an option into revenue

Conclusion: profit arrives later and is smaller than revenue

Revenue from AI data centers will arrive sooner than profit. For Naver, the profit grows from 2028 and depends on prices, fees and use. For SK Telecom, the profit is diluted by the Horizon deal and early costs. For both companies, the existing business, the multiple the market pays for it and a few large assets decide most of the value.

Four things would make us more positive: signed contracts with minimum use, money actually received, margins that survive the fees, and falling credit costs. The token gateway for SK Telecom and Dunamu for Naver are options, and they count only after they show up in results.

Interest note: We use AI models, including Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s models, in our research. SK Telecom holds a stake in Anthropic, which we count in SK Telecom’s base value at 65% of book value, and OpenAI has announced plans to explore AI data centers in Korea with SK Telecom. We cite public figures only and make no judgment about the effect on either company.²⁶

Disclaimer: For research and information purposes only. Not investment advice. Names cited are for analytical illustration; readers should perform their own due diligence and consult licensed advisors before any investment decision.

Ornn GPU price index, updated 2026-10-24 20:00 UTC: H100 SXM $3.02 an hour (+3.42% over one month), H200 $6.20 (+20.16%), B200 $9.57 (+19.48%), A100 SXM4 $1.08 (+5.88%), RTX PRO 6000 $1.55 (0.00%). A limited sample of traded prices. ↩︎ ↩︎
NAVER story, 2026-07-24: 55MW from the first half of 2027, 200MW in 2028. ↩︎
NAVER story: roadmap of 55MW, 100MW and 200MW. The monthly schedule and the 2029 level are our assumptions. ↩︎
Nebius second-quarter 2026 shareholder letter: four large contracts at a yield of $20 to $25 million per megawatt; a “$40-50 million per MW” price opportunity, with the first such contract signed that week. ↩︎ ↩︎
NH Investment & Securities, NAVER, 2026-10-01, pp. 25 and 30: AI Factory revenue ₩730bn, ₩3,320bn and ₩6,510bn and operating profit ₩38.7bn, ₩228.5bn and ₩574.8bn for 2027 to 2029; data center capacity of 100, 200, 300 and 400MW for 2027 to 2030. These are NH’s estimates and assumptions. ↩︎
a16z, Charts of the week, 2026-10-23: prices “anywhere from 9% higher to 143% higher” than a straight-line six-year depreciation baseline. An investor’s reading, not a return on equipment. ↩︎
NAVER second-quarter 2026 IR presentation: revenue excluding Wallapop +14.5%, platform +12.3%, advertising +7.5% from a year earlier; operating profit flat as costs rose on computing assets, content and data. ↩︎
Korea Investment & Securities, 3Q26 preview, 2026-10-01. In Korean. ↩︎
NAVER shareholder presentation on the Dunamu deal: Naver’s holding in Naver Financial from 69.0% to 17.0%; 46.5% of voting rights including delegation; Dunamu 100% share value ₩15.1tn; exchange ratio 3.06 to 1. The shareholding may change if appraisal rights are exercised. ↩︎
ZDNet Korea, 2026-03-30: Dunamu consolidated net income of ₩708.9bn for 2025. In Korean. ↩︎
Financial News, 2026-08-14: Dunamu first-half 2026 net income of ₩108.4bn. In Korean. ↩︎
SK Telecom second-quarter 2026 results, 2026-08-05: AI data center revenue ₩136.2bn, up 92.5% from a year earlier; first quarter ₩131.4bn. ↩︎
SK Telecom newsroom, 2026-08-27: SK Horizon to be set up in the first quarter of 2027; 318MW including eight existing data centers and sites under construction; stakes of 51%, 29% and 20%. ↩︎
SK Telecom Form 6-K, 2026-08-27: 24,481,427 existing shares sold for ₩1,881,128,369,253; 15,617,069 new shares for about ₩1.20 trillion; scheduled disposal date 2027-03-04. ↩︎
SK Telecom newsroom, 2026-07-23: SK Hyper set up; ₩750bn by 2030; phased opening of 5GW in 2029; sequential expansion toward 15GW in 2035. ↩︎
SK Telecom clarification filing on DART, 2026-10-13: no concrete plan at present for an overseas 5GW addition, in reply to a news report. The 15GW figure is a long-term plan under review. In Korean. ↩︎
ZDNet Korea, published 2026-10-25: token gateway to manage model choice, usage, cost and the scope of work given to AI; launch date and pricing not disclosed. In Korean. ↩︎
Amazon Bedrock documentation: prompt routing between foundation models of the same family. ↩︎
Cloudflare AI Gateway documentation: analytics and logging, caching, rate limiting, request retries and model fallback. ↩︎
SK Telecom half-year report on DART, 2026-08-13: Anthropic 3,860,330 shares, 0.2%, book value ₩3,505,017 million. In Korean. ↩︎
SK Telecom second-quarter 2026 investor briefing: first-half revenue ₩8,751.4bn and operating profit ₩1,103.6bn; second-quarter mobile revenue down 1.9% on fewer subscribers; dividend ₩830 per share in each of the first and second quarters. ↩︎
Reuters via Investing.com, 2026-10-14: AI infrastructure stocks fall as expectations of higher US rates deepen financing concerns. ↩︎
Dong-A Ilbo, 2026-10-19, citing unnamed industry sources: up to $9bn (about ₩12tn) of outside funding in a draft structure; Naver said the structure is still under discussion. In Korean. ↩︎
NAVER disclosure of the share issue to Nvidia (KIND), 2026-07-27: about $1 billion, on condition that NAVER secures at least $9 billion of computing infrastructure; October 30, 2026 is the latest payment date and can be changed. ↩︎
NAVER press release, 2026-09-04: Brookfield “has committed to investing up to US$9 billion” in the 200MW first phase of a 1GW AI factory project. ↩︎
The Korea Economic Daily (KED Global), 2023-08-13, on SK Telecom’s investment in Anthropic; OpenAI, 2025-10-01, on exploring AI data centers in Korea with SK Telecom. ↩︎

Korea's AI Data Center Race: What Naver and SK Telecom Have Really Secured

Sun, 25 Oct 2026 15:30:00 +0900

Korea wants to be Asia’s hub for AI computing, and the announcements have been huge. Nvidia said Naver plans to deploy more than 60,000 of its chips. Brookfield says it will put up to $9 billion into Naver’s first AI factory. SK Telecom set up a new company to build 5 gigawatts of data centers, and that company’s chief executive put the cost of the first phase at about $350 billion.

Big numbers are easy to announce and hard to finish. A plan is not an order. An order is not a delivery. And money promised is not money in the bank. This post sorts out what each company has actually secured, using filings and company releases up to October 25, 2026.

The short answer: Naver is furthest along in turning AI computing into a business it can sell. SK Horizon, the data center unit SK Telecom is splitting off, has the most visible cash today because it already runs paying data centers. SK Hyper is a long-dated development project. Its value depends on customers, power and outside money that are not yet signed.

Five things to take away

These are three different businesses, not two companies. Naver’s AI Factory sells computing. SK Horizon rents out buildings, power and connections. SK Hyper develops new gigawatt-scale sites. Their numbers should not be compared one to one or added up.
Naver’s money is the most concrete, but it is conditional. Nvidia agreed to buy $1 billion of new Naver shares, on condition that Naver secures at least $9 billion of computing infrastructure. Brookfield says it is committed to investing up to $9 billion in the first 200MW phase. Neither the payment nor the final financing close was confirmed as of Oct 25.¹²
SK Horizon’s ₩3.08 trillion deal is mostly a sale. About ₩1.88 trillion goes to SK Telecom for existing shares. About ₩1.2 trillion is new money for Horizon itself.³
“Securing GPUs” usually means a plan. Most Korean GPU counts are deployment plans or rough conversions, not chips that are delivered, running and billed.⁴⁵
Revenue is not payback. Naver expects AI Factory revenue from the first half of 2027. SK Hyper’s first 5GW opens in phases from 2029. None of the new projects has published a breakeven date, and overseas peers show that fast-growing AI clouds can still burn cash.

Data are as of Oct 25, 2026. Calculations marked as ours are illustrations, not company forecasts.

1. Three businesses, three stages

Start by separating the companies from the projects.

Naver’s AI Factory sells computing. “AI factory” is Nvidia’s name for a data center built to train and run AI models. Naver plans to run one at its Gak Sejong data center, linked to its own cloud, its HyperCLOVA X models and its search and shopping services. It is the first phase of a 1GW project with Nvidia. The first 55MW (megawatts of power capacity) is due to start in the first half of 2027, and 200MW is targeted for 2028.⁶² Naver expects related revenue from the first half of 2027.⁷

SK Horizon rents out buildings, power and connections. SK Telecom is splitting SK Broadband’s data center and subsea cable business into a new company. Infrastructure investor KKR and a group led by IMM Investment are buying in. The new company covers 8 existing data centers plus sites under construction, 318MW in total.⁸ Its data centers already earn money today.

SK Hyper develops new sites. SK Telecom set up SK Hyper in July as a wholly owned subsidiary. Its job is to secure land, substations and customers for gigawatt-scale campuses. The first 5GW is due to open in phases from 2029, with expansion toward 15GW planned around 2035.⁹

A fourth item is easy to mix up: SK Telecom’s own AI cloud with Nvidia, a plan of up to 2GW with the first site targeted for 2027.¹⁰ SK Telecom has said that how much of its partner projects falls inside SK Hyper depends on each contract, so we do not add these numbers together.¹¹

Why does this matter? A company that sells computing earns more per megawatt, but it carries the chip risk. A company that rents out buildings earns less but steadier money, and its customers carry the chip risk. Valuing the two the same way is the most common mistake in this debate.

2. When does the money start?

Three dates often get mixed up: the day revenue starts, the day the business makes an operating profit, and the day the investment is paid back. For the new projects, only the first has been announced.

Business	When revenue starts or is due	Profit and payback
Naver’s existing cloud and AI	Running today	Mixed into existing results; must be separated from the AI Factory
Naver AI Factory	55MW from 1H 2027; 200MW target for 2028	No breakeven date published
SK Telecom’s AI data centers today	₩136.2bn of revenue in Q2 2026, up 92.5%	Profit per GPU cluster not disclosed
SK Horizon	Earns money today; new company due in 1Q 2027	A spin-off does not create new demand by itself
AWS Ulsan and SKT’s first Nvidia AI factory	Both targeted for 2027	Need commercial operation and customer billing
SK Hyper	First 5GW from 2029; CEO says revenue is possible as early as 2027	Type and size of any 2027 revenue not disclosed

Sources: company releases, SK Telecom’s second-quarter results and press reports of the SK Hyper interview.⁷¹²¹³¹⁴

One accounting detail matters here. In the second quarter, Naver lengthened the useful life of its GPU and CPU servers from five to six years. That defers about ₩100 billion of cost a year.¹⁵ It makes reported profit look better sooner. It does not change how much cash the chips cost, or how fast they lose value in the rental market.

3. Naver’s edge: one company from the building to the app

Naver runs the data center, the GPU clusters, the cloud platform, its own AI models and the services that use them. That lets it sell more than raw chip time. It can help a customer build, train and deploy a model. Its own search and shopping demand can also fill early capacity.

Strength	Naver’s advantage	What still needs proof
Customers	Its own services, Korean companies and government, overseas sovereign AI deals	Whether Korean demand alone can fill 200MW and more; few overseas contracts are public
Product	Links the building to models and apps	Performance and support against global GPU clouds on equal terms
Supply and capital	Nvidia as a future shareholder, Brookfield as capital partner	Final financing terms, lease payments and guarantees
Profit path	Computing revenue plus better own services	Separating GPU profit from the rest of Naver

There is a catch in the second column. When Naver’s own services use the chips, that is not outside revenue. Its value shows up as lower computing bills, better ad conversion or better products, and it has to be measured that way.

On customers, Naver’s chief executive said the company would try to secure customers for the first capacity in advance.⁷ No customer names, contracted megawatts, prices, terms or minimum-use commitments have been published. That is a good sign of intent, but not yet enough to calculate the profit on any contract.

4. SK’s edge: land, power and connections

SK Telecom is building two layers. SK Horizon takes the existing data centers and subsea cables and pairs them with infrastructure money. SK Hyper takes on new land, power and customers. This split lets steady, running assets raise infrastructure capital, while each new project raises its own money.

SK’s network, subsea cables, enterprise sales and data center experience help bring overseas customers to Korean sites. The group’s construction, energy and memory businesses can also help with design and purchasing. But being in the same group does not automatically give a project a power connection, cheap electricity, first call on high-bandwidth memory or a cheap guarantee. Each of those needs its own contract.

Partner	Role	What it is not
KKR	Equity investor in SK Horizon	Not committed money for SK Hyper’s 5GW
IMM-led group	Co-investor in SK Horizon, 20% final stake	Not a guarantor of customer revenue
Nvidia	AI cloud design, chips and memory partnership	No disclosed equity investment in SKT or SK Hyper; no promise to buy unused capacity
AWS	Partner for the Ulsan AI Zone, due to run by 2027 under a 15-year agreement	Leased megawatts and minimum use not disclosed
Lambda	GPU cloud partner; SKT invested in it	Money flowing out of SKT, not into SK Hyper
Penguin Solutions	AI cluster design and operations; SKT invested $200m	Separate from any outside funding for SK Hyper

Sources: SK Telecom, Nvidia and Penguin Solutions releases.¹³¹⁶¹⁷

SK Hyper’s weakness is not that its goals are big. It is that the customer, money and power contracts behind them are not yet public. SK says it will build in steps as demand appears. That lowers the risk of spending everything at once. It also means revenue waits until customers sign.

5. “Securing GPUs” has five steps

To know what “securing GPUs” really means, check five steps in order. A plan is announced. A binding order is placed. The chips are delivered and owned. They are installed with power and networking and pass testing. Customers start paying. A headline number usually tells you only the first step.

Naver, 60,000+ GPUs. In October 2025, Nvidia said Naver Cloud plans to deploy more than 60,000 of its GPUs, part of more than 260,000 planned across Korea.⁴
Naver, 200MW, about 100,000 GPUs. In July 2026, Nvidia described Naver’s 200MW expansion as roughly 100,000 GPUs on its next-generation Vera Rubin platform.⁵ This is a rough conversion of a plan. It should not be added to the 60,000.
SK Group, 50,000+ GPUs. This is a group-wide plan from October 2025. There is no basis for treating it as chips owned by SK Telecom or SK Hyper.⁴
SK Telecom, up to 2GW. A letter of intent with Nvidia for AI factories, part of a wider SK–Nvidia partnership described as worth more than $500 billion, which also covers memory.¹⁰ Chip counts, prices and delivery dates are not public.
SK Telecom’s existing GPU cloud. A paid service built with Lambda has been running since 2025.¹⁶ It is the only item here that clearly reaches the billing step, and it is small.

Locking in chips early helps when a chip generation is in short supply. Customers buy a start date as much as a machine. But if power, cooling or networking is late, the chips sit idle and the owner pays for them anyway. And each new Nvidia generation pushes down the hourly rental price of the old one. So the useful comparison is not chip counts. It is the chip generation, the date the cluster can serve customers, how many hours customers actually pay for, and the price once the next generation arrives.

6. Nvidia’s role: supplier, shareholder or customer?

Nvidia can play three roles. Each needs its own contract.

Role	Naver	SK Telecom and SK Group	Benchmark abroad
Technology and supply	Nvidia data center designs, Blackwell and Vera Rubin chips	Same, plus memory co-development with SK hynix	Shared technology helps but gives no exclusivity
Shareholder	$1bn share purchase agreement	No equity investment found	Nvidia has invested in CoreWeave and Nebius
Backstop customer	Not found	Not found	CoreWeave: Nvidia must buy unused capacity

The backstop matters most. In September 2025, CoreWeave disclosed an order from Nvidia with an initial value of $6.3 billion. Under it, Nvidia is obliged to buy cloud capacity that CoreWeave’s other customers leave unused, through April 2032, subject to delivery and termination terms.¹⁸ That kind of contract moves part of the demand risk onto the supplier. We found nothing like it for Naver or SK Telecom.

Naver’s case is still stronger than an ordinary partnership. A shareholder has a stake in the outcome. But Nvidia also sells the chips. When investment money and chip purchases are linked, Nvidia’s revenue and Naver’s eventual return are different things. Having Nvidia as a shareholder does not guarantee customers or returns.

7. Follow the money

The size of a funding headline matters less than who receives the money, in what form and on what conditions.

Naver. Nvidia’s $1 billion share purchase comes with a condition: Naver must secure at least $9 billion of computing infrastructure, separate from Nvidia’s own money. So the $1 billion and the $9 billion should not be added up as cash in hand. October 30 is the latest payment date in the contract. Payment can come earlier, and the date can be extended, so it needs its own filing.¹

Brookfield’s money moved from a non-binding term sheet in July to a commitment to invest up to $9 billion in September.¹⁹² That is progress. But a press release does not confirm that the bank loans and project equity have closed. Korean press reported that KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana, Woori and NH Investment & Securities are reviewing loans, with Naver to lease the facility long-term.²⁰ Those institutions are reviewing; they are not signed lenders.

If a separate project company owns the assets, Naver spends less cash upfront. In exchange, long-term lease payments, minimum-use obligations, guarantees and profit sharing decide the real burden. Until those contracts are public, we cannot say the debt burden has gone away. And closing the 200MW financing would not mean the full 1GW is funded.

Naver itself is not short of cash, but not all of it is free to spend. At end-June it had ₩8.40 trillion of cash and short-term financial assets on a consolidated basis. Its own net cash figure, which takes out Naver Financial’s cash and debt, was ₩1.83 trillion.¹⁵ A ₩400 billion policy loan (five years, with interest in the 3% range) covers 43% of a ₩922 billion Sejong expansion and GPU project. The remaining ₩522 billion equals about 29% of that net cash.²¹ This is a size comparison, not a verdict on how Naver will pay.

SK Horizon. The deal totals about ₩3.08 trillion. About ₩1.88 trillion (61%) is SK Telecom selling existing shares, and about ₩1.2 trillion (39%) is new equity for Horizon.³ Final stakes are SK Telecom 51%, KKR 29% and the IMM-led group 20%. For SK Telecom as a group, the whole deal brings in outside money. But only the ₩1.2 trillion lands in Horizon for growth. Horizon’s new capex plans, debt and investor rights are not fully public, so we cannot yet say whether that is enough.

SK Hyper. Two numbers are often compared. SK Telecom’s board approved up to ₩750 billion of investment through 2030 for land and substations.⁹ SK Hyper’s chief executive estimated, in an interview reported by Korean press, that the first 5GW alone would need about $350 billion.¹⁴ At ₩1,325 per dollar, ₩750 billion is about 0.16% of $350 billion. But one is seed money for site development and the other is the full cost of a multi-year build, including equipment. The ratio shows scale, not a funding gap. The real gap can only be measured project by project, once customers and investors sign.

8. Lessons from abroad

Overseas companies that already run this business show what to watch.

Company	Comparable to	What the numbers show	Lesson
CoreWeave	Naver and SKT GPU clouds	First-half 2026 operating cash flow of $3.66bn against $14.12bn spent on equipment and property	Fast revenue growth does not remove the need for outside money
Nebius	GPU cloud growth and funding	Operating cash flow of $4.50bn, of which $4.40bn came from customers paying in advance; capex of $8.13bn	Prepayments help fund growth but come with service obligations
Core Scientific	SK Horizon and SK Hyper as site providers	590MW leased to CoreWeave, of which 395MW is billing; 195MW still being built or tested	Count megawatts that bill, not megawatts that are signed
Singtel’s Nxera	SK Horizon	Telecom data center platform with outside capital; an investor paid S$337m for preference shares in Nxera	Closest model to Horizon: keep site money and GPU money separate

Sources: company filings and annual report.²²²³²⁴²⁵

Nebius also shows how funding works in practice. On Oct 22 it announced a $3.5 billion financing facility arranged by Citi, with a 364-day term and interest of SOFR plus 2.75%, rising to at most 3.50%.²⁶ A facility is not cash until it is drawn. And funding chips and buildings that last years with one-year money only works if longer-term financing follows.

Korean operators may have an edge over US “neoclouds” (GPU-rental specialists like CoreWeave and Nebius) in local sovereign demand, existing telecom networks and their own services. They have not yet shown an edge in signed contracts with very large global customers, in dollar funding, or in running huge GPU fleets. We have no like-for-like data on power costs, chip prices, utilization or contract prices, so we do not rank their cost advantage.

9. The payback test

Raising construction money is only half the job. The project also has to earn it back.

To show why chip life matters so much, take a hypothetical $10 billion AI site. It has $8 billion of GPUs and servers that must earn 10% a year, $2 billion of buildings that must earn 8% over 20 years, and $0.5 billion a year of cash running costs. If the chips stay useful for six years, the site must earn about $2.54 billion a year to pay back its cost plus the required return. At four years, it needs $3.23 billion. At three years, $3.92 billion.²⁷ Cutting chip life from six years to four alone adds about $0.69 billion a year.

This is not a forecast for Naver or SK. Naver may lease rather than own, and the real split of costs depends on its contracts. The point is who carries this risk: the building owner, the lenders or the computing seller. For shareholders, that question matters more than the headline investment.

For funding, a simple 12-month coverage test helps:

Money available: cash on hand, signed but undrawn facilities whose conditions are met, customer prepayments that can be used, and a cautious estimate of operating cash inflow.
Money needed: committed construction and chip payments, interest, principal and lease payments, working capital, and a reserve for delays.

Divide the first by the second. Do not count conditional money, or the same money twice. Include parent guarantees and minimum lease payments if they exist. Neither company has published enough to calculate this for the new projects, and we do not treat missing items as zero.

10. What would change our view

Business	Our read today	Good signs	Warning signs
Naver	The most concrete path from customers and capital to new computing revenue	Nvidia payment, Brookfield financing close, minimum-use contracts with first customers, 55MW passing tests and billing	Funding conditions missed, start-up delays, lease terms longer than customer contracts
SK Horizon	The clearest structure for growing running assets	Deal close, new money received, more megawatts billing at new sites	Deal delays, larger capital obligations, customer concentration, weaker power-cost pass-through
SK Hyper	A long-dated development option; full funding not yet judged	A named anchor customer, signed outside investors, a grid connection and money being spent	Rising development costs with no customers, larger parent guarantees, land or grid delays

The strongest argument against our caution: computing is still scarce worldwide, and outside capital is eager. That can speed things up. Naver says it is lining up customers early, and SK says it will invest step by step with demand. Unpublished contracts are not proof of failure.

But a supplier’s partnership or investment is different evidence from an independent customer’s ability to pay. Even long contracts carry acceptance tests, termination rights for delays, credit risk and power-cost terms. The key question is not how big the revenue is. It is who carries the cost of idle GPUs and construction overruns.

11. What this means for memory chips

Korea’s AI build-out adds a new source of demand for memory, including high-bandwidth memory (HBM) from SK hynix and Samsung. But plans should not be turned into this year’s GPU orders or HBM sales. SK Hyper’s 5GW is a 2029-and-later story. SK Telecom’s own AI cloud is a 2027 story. And Nvidia’s memory partnership with SK does not prove that SK’s data centers will buy all of their HBM from SK hynix.

12. Calendar: what to watch

When	What	What counts as a pass
After Oct 30, 2026	Naver filing on the Nvidia share sale	Payment completed, or the terms of an extension
Naver’s next results and funding filings	Brookfield project company, customer and lease structure	Financing closed and drawn, parent guarantees, customer contract terms and capacity
Late 2026 to early 2027	SK Hyper outside investors	Named investors, equity or debt, amounts, drawdown terms, anchor-customer commitments
1Q 2027	SK Horizon set-up and deal close	Approvals, payment for old and new shares, stakes and net debt after the deal
1H 2027	Naver’s 55MW and SKT’s first AI factory	Power on, GPUs delivered, customer acceptance, billing starts

Bottom line

Korea has real assets in this race: a national internet champion with its own AI stack, a telecom group with land, power and networks, and supportive policy money. What it does not have yet is public proof that the new capacity will be paid for. Watch three things in order: money that actually arrives, megawatts that actually bill, and contracts that say who pays for idle chips. Naver should show the first two soonest. SK Horizon already shows the second for its existing sites. SK Hyper has to show all three.

Interest note: We use AI models, including Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s models, in our research. SK Telecom invested about $100 million in Anthropic in 2023, and OpenAI has announced plans to explore AI data centers in Korea with SK Telecom. We cite public figures only and make no judgment about the effect on either company.²⁸

NAVER disclosure of the share issue to Nvidia (KIND), 2026-07-27: about $1 billion; condition that NAVER secures at least $9 billion of computing infrastructure, excluding this investment; Oct 30, 2026 is the latest payment date and can be extended. In Korean. ↩︎ ↩︎
NAVER press release, 2026-09-04: Brookfield “has committed to investing up to US$9 billion” in the 200MW first phase of a 1GW AI factory project. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
SK Telecom Form 6-K, 2026-08-27: 24,481,427 existing shares sold for ₩1,881,128,369,253; 15,617,069 new shares for about ₩1.20 trillion; scheduled disposal date 2027-03-04. ↩︎ ↩︎
Nvidia newsroom, 2025-10-30: more than 260,000 GPUs planned in Korea, including NAVER Cloud more than 60,000 and SK Group more than 50,000. All described as plans. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Nvidia blog, July 2026: NAVER’s 200MW expansion at roughly 100,000 GPUs on Vera Rubin. ↩︎ ↩︎
NAVER story, 2026-07-24: 55MW from the first half of 2027, 200MW in 2028. ↩︎
NAVER second-quarter 2026 results release, 2026-08-07: AI Factory revenue expected from the first half of 2027; plan to secure customers for the first capacity in advance. In Korean. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
SK Telecom newsroom, 2026-08-27: SK Horizon to be set up in the first quarter of 2027; 318MW including 8 existing data centers and new sites; stakes of 51%, 29% and 20%. ↩︎
SK Telecom newsroom, 2026-07-23: SK Hyper set up; ₩750bn by 2030 for sites and substations; phased opening of 5GW in 2029; sequential expansion toward 15GW in 2035. ↩︎ ↩︎
Nvidia Korea blog, 2026-07-25: partnership of more than $500 billion, letter of intent for SK Telecom AI factories of up to 2GW, first factory targeted for 2027. In Korean. ↩︎ ↩︎
SK Telecom newsroom Q&A, 2026. In Korean. ↩︎
SK Telecom second-quarter 2026 results, 2026-08-05: AI data center revenue ₩136.2bn, up 92.5% from a year earlier. ↩︎
SK Telecom newsroom, 2025-06-22: AWS and SK Group Ulsan AI Zone, operation targeted by 2027, 15-year strategic agreement. ↩︎ ↩︎
The Korea Economic Daily, 2026-10-23, and The Elec, 2026-10-23, both citing the SK Hyper chief executive’s Bloomberg interview: about $350 billion for the first 5GW; revenue possible as early as next year. Secondary; both rely on the same interview. In Korean. ↩︎ ↩︎
NAVER second-quarter 2026 IR presentation, pp. 7 and 9: consolidated cash and short-term financial instruments ₩8,401.4bn, company-defined net cash ₩1,825.7bn; server useful life changed from five to six years, about ₩100bn of annual cost deferral. ↩︎ ↩︎
SK Telecom newsroom, 2025-01-13: GPU-as-a-service launch with Lambda, in which SKT has invested. ↩︎ ↩︎
Penguin Solutions, 2025-01-09: SK Telecom investment of $200 million. ↩︎
CoreWeave Form 8-K, September 2025: initial order value of $6.3 billion; Nvidia obligated to buy residual unused capacity through 2032-04-13. ↩︎
Nvidia newsroom, July 2026: Brookfield “entered into a nonbinding term sheet to fund up to $9 billion.” ↩︎
Seoul Economic Daily, 2026-09-23, citing unnamed investment-banking sources. Secondary. ↩︎
Financial Services Commission, 2026-04-16: ₩400bn of loans (₩340bn from the advanced strategic industries fund and ₩60bn from Korea Development Bank) for a ₩922.1bn project, five-year term, low rate in the 3% range. In Korean. ↩︎
CoreWeave Form 10-Q, six months to 2026-06-30: operating cash flow $3,663m; purchases of property and equipment $14,117m. The gap is our subtraction, not company-defined free cash flow. ↩︎
Nebius Form 6-K, Exhibit 99.1, 2026-08-12: six-month operating cash flow $4,504.1m; capex $8,130.3m; increase in deferred revenue $4,395.0m. ↩︎
Core Scientific Form 10-Q, as of 2026-06-30: about 590MW of leased customer power capacity at five CoreWeave sites, 395MW billable, 195MW under construction or commissioning. ↩︎
Singtel Annual Report 2026, year to 2026-03-31: Nxera preference shares issued to Stellar Asia Holdings II for net S$337m (5.8%); FY27 growth capex of about S$1.2bn, mainly Nxera and RE:AI. ↩︎
Nebius newsroom, 2026-10-22: $3.5 billion senior secured facility, 364 days, Term SOFR plus 2.75% rising to up to 3.50%. Drawn amount not disclosed. ↩︎
Our illustration. Capital recovery factor CRF(r, n) = r / [1 − (1 + r)^−n]. Yearly amount = $8bn × CRF(10%, chip life) + $2bn × CRF(8%, 20) + $0.5bn. Taxes, ramp-up, resale value, inflation and replacement costs are left out. Not a forecast for NAVER or SK. ↩︎
The Korea Economic Daily (KED Global), 2023-08-13, on SK Telecom’s investment in Anthropic; OpenAI, 2025-10-01, on exploring AI data centers in Korea with SK Telecom. ↩︎