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From left: Seok Sang-ok, CEO of Naver Labs; Abdelmajid Iraqui Houssaini, CEO of TAQA Morocco; Chae Sun-joo, Head of Strategic Business at Naver; Kim Yoo-won, CEO of Naver Cloud; and Khalid Arab, Founder of the Lloyd Group, attended the GTC Paris event to discuss potential cooperation for the establishment of an AI data center in Morocco. (Photo courtesy of Naver Cloud) |
[Alpha Biz= Kim Jisun] NAVER (KRX: 035420) is accelerating its presence in the global AI value chain. On June 13, Team NAVER announced that it has formed a consortium with NVIDIA, Nexus Core Systems, and global investment firm Lloyds Capital to establish a next-generation AI data center in Morocco, North Africa.
The project aims to provide sovereign AI computing services across the EMEA region—Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The first phase of the initiative is scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter of this year.
Leveraging Morocco’s geographic advantage—just 15 kilometers from Europe—and its renewable energy infrastructure, the consortium plans to ensure both cost efficiency and sustainability.
In the initial phase, the facility will feature a 40MW-class AI supercomputing infrastructure powered by NVIDIA’s latest Blackwell (GB200) GPUs. The consortium plans to scale this capacity up to 500MW in the future. To support this, a renewable energy supply agreement has been signed with Morocco’s leading energy company, TAQA.
NAVER Cloud will be responsible for platform operations of the data center, delivering integrated services based on its proprietary cloud and AI technologies.
The initiative also addresses growing regulatory demands in Europe related to data sovereignty. By enabling local data storage, processing, and operations, the project aims to establish a sovereign AI infrastructure that enhances regulatory compliance and builds market trust.
Alphabiz Reporter Kim Jisun(stockmk2020@alphabiz.co.kr)
