Naver’s Nov. 3 filing: 6,558,435 new shares priced at 204,500 won each
Once payment is completed on Nov. 6, Nvidia will rank third, behind the National Pension Service (9.49%) and BlackRock (7.09%)
Founder and board chair Lee Hae-jin’s stake will fall from 4.03% to 3.8%
The process for Nvidia to become Naver’s third-largest shareholder is nearing completion. Naver said in a Nov. 3 filing that the amount to be raised in won through its share issuance to Nvidia had been finalized at 1.3412 trillion won.
Nvidia will acquire 6,558,435 newly issued shares at 204,500 won per share. Payment is due Nov. 6. Once payment is complete, Nvidia is expected to hold about 4.13% of Naver.
As of August, Naver’s largest shareholder was the National Pension Service, with 9.49%, followed by U.S. asset manager BlackRock, with 7.09%. Nvidia will rank third. The stake held by founder and board chair Lee Hae-jin, previously the third-largest shareholder, will fall from 4.03% to about 3.8% as the new shares are issued.
Exchange-rate changes
The amount in won and the number of shares both fell compared with the announcement on July 27. At the time, Naver estimated that $1 billion would amount to 1.4809 trillion won, and projected the issuance of 7,241,564 new shares, giving Nvidia a 4.54% stake.
The final figures are lower by 139.7 billion won and about 680,000 shares. The change reflects a shift in the exchange rate, with the dollar investment remaining at $1 billion. The preliminary July estimate used an exchange rate of about 1,481 won per dollar, while the final amount was calculated at about 1,341 won per dollar. As the won strengthened, the same dollar amount bought fewer shares, lowering Nvidia’s stake accordingly.
The payment date was also postponed once. Payment, originally scheduled for Oct. 30, was moved to Nov. 6, while the planned listing date for the new shares was shifted from Nov. 20 to Nov. 27. Naver said in its filing that it had met a contractual condition requiring it to secure $9 billion in computing infrastructure.
Lee Hae-jin: “The business comes first; the stake comes second”
Lee accepted the dilution of his stake. The issuance of new shares will reduce his ownership, placing him below Nvidia in the shareholder rankings. Asked about the decline in his stake at a press conference last November announcing a stock swap between Naver Financial and Dunamu, Lee said, “I think the business comes first, and the stake is a secondary matter.” On July 24 (local time), Lee signed a strategic investment agreement with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at the company’s headquarters in California.
The investment is aimed at building an “AI factory”—a large-scale data center for training AI models and delivering AI services. Naver will build and operate the data center, while Nvidia will supply GPUs.
Brookfield will raise up to $9 billion in infrastructure financing. Naver plans to launch at a capacity of about 55 MW in the first half of 2027 on Nvidia’s DSX AI infrastructure platform, expand to 200 MW in 2028, and eventually scale up to 1 GW.
The project is intended to serve demand across the Asia-Pacific, Europe and the Middle East. Naver currently operates a cluster of about 100,000 GPUs in South Korea and expects to secure more than 60,000 of the 260,000 Nvidia GPUs in the country.
In July, Naver also announced plans to cancel about 1 trillion won worth of treasury shares to help mitigate the impact of the new share issuance on share value.