Naver sells $1b in green bonds for AI push

Naver, a South Korean internet company, sold US$500 million of five-year dollar bonds and 500 million euros (US$588 million) of seven-year euro bonds as it steps up spending on AI and data centers.

The euro deal is its first bond in that currency. Proceeds will fund eco-friendly data centers and other environmental, social, and governance initiatives, including projects aimed at enhancing energy efficiency.

Naver said orders topped nine times the issue size from 437 investors.

Naver previously plans to invest more than 1 trillion won (US$680 million), in GPUs from this year and is studying AI data center projects in Europe.

🔗 Source: Bloomberg

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Naver’s green goals face the high cost of AI expansion

Naver is raising fresh money for lower-impact data centers, building on earlier work at GAK Chuncheon, a Naver data center in South Korea. The site holds LEED Platinum certification, a widely used green-building standard, and it runs the custom-designed NAVER Air Membrane Unit (NAMU) cooling system. That setup cuts artificial cooling to about 35 days per year 1.
Naver targets carbon neutrality by 2040, which is 10 years earlier than South Korea’s national target 2.
Naver also expects greenhouse gas emissions to climb fast over the next decade as it adds data center capacity 2.
Costs are rising with the buildout. Naver put 473.2 billion won (US$322 million) into machinery and equipment, including servers, in the fourth quarter for the GAK Sejong expansion, another Naver data center. The spend adds strain as Naver turns to bond markets 3.

Green bonds support a national push for digital sovereignty

The bond sale also backs South Korea’s plan to rank among the top three global AI powers by 2030. The national plan calls for deploying 260,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) 4.
Naver plays a central role in the push for digital sovereignty, which keeps domestic data and AI infrastructure in South Korea rather than handing control to foreign technology companies 1.
Funding GPU-heavy infrastructure remains hard to time. Processors often run on a two-to-three-year development cycle, which drives depreciation costs and forces faster revenue from Naver’s AI services 3.