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Research DeepSeek V4-Flash 0731 exits preview with 50 intelligence score, 60% cheaper than GPT-5.6 Luna Funding ThreatLocker secures $190M Series F for AI-aware zero-trust security platform Market CoreWeave sweetens $2.6B loan terms as debt investors grow wary of AI infrastructure Chips AMD announces 10% GPU price increase August 2026 as GDDR6 memory costs surge Funding Function Health closes $450M growth round from General Catalyst; 500K+ members, 100M+ tests Funding Antora Energy closes $550M Series C for thermal batteries; eyes 2nd U.S. manufacturing hub Policy EU launches call for 7 AI Gigafactories with €10B public, €20B private target Funding NAVER, NVIDIA, Brookfield expand Korea AI factory to 200MW with $10B investment Market Nvidia negotiates $250B guarantee for OpenAI's Ohio 10-GW data center lease amid financing gap Chips Microsoft commits to Windows 11 memory optimization for 8GB systems by end of 2026 Funding Antares raises $470M for nuclear microreactors; Mark-0 hits criticality for DOD 2028 deployment Breaking Anthropic's Claude hacked 3 real companies during security evals; Mythos 5 published PyPI malware Chips Eliyan hits unicorn status; $145M Series C for electro-optical interconnects solving AI data center bottleneck Funding Temporal raises $300M Series D at $5B valuation; 380% revenue growth on agentic AI demand Market Claude Sonnet 5 introductory pricing expires Aug 31; OpenAI Luna drops 80% via self-optimized kernel Chips TSMC N2 yield climbing past 70%; Intel 18A stalled at 50% as foundry margin gap widens Funding Commonwealth Fusion Systems closes $1B funding round; $4B total raised, SPARC near completion Funding Nscale acquires Ray platform steward Anyscale for $1.65B; closes loop on full-stack AI cloud Policy U.S. Commerce Dept. takes equity stakes in seven chip/compute firms for $870M in R&D funding Market Anthropic bankers begin investor meetings, targets October 2026 IPO at $965B valuation Research DeepSeek V4-Flash 0731 exits preview with 50 intelligence score, 60% cheaper than GPT-5.6 Luna Funding ThreatLocker secures $190M Series F for AI-aware zero-trust security platform Market CoreWeave sweetens $2.6B loan terms as debt investors grow wary of AI infrastructure Chips AMD announces 10% GPU price increase August 2026 as GDDR6 memory costs surge Funding Function Health closes $450M growth round from General Catalyst; 500K+ members, 100M+ tests Funding Antora Energy closes $550M Series C for thermal batteries; eyes 2nd U.S. manufacturing hub Policy EU launches call for 7 AI Gigafactories with €10B public, €20B private target Funding NAVER, NVIDIA, Brookfield expand Korea AI factory to 200MW with $10B investment Market Nvidia negotiates $250B guarantee for OpenAI's Ohio 10-GW data center lease amid financing gap Chips Microsoft commits to Windows 11 memory optimization for 8GB systems by end of 2026 Funding Antares raises $470M for nuclear microreactors; Mark-0 hits criticality for DOD 2028 deployment Breaking Anthropic's Claude hacked 3 real companies during security evals; Mythos 5 published PyPI malware Chips Eliyan hits unicorn status; $145M Series C for electro-optical interconnects solving AI data center bottleneck Funding Temporal raises $300M Series D at $5B valuation; 380% revenue growth on agentic AI demand Market Claude Sonnet 5 introductory pricing expires Aug 31; OpenAI Luna drops 80% via self-optimized kernel Chips TSMC N2 yield climbing past 70%; Intel 18A stalled at 50% as foundry margin gap widens Funding Commonwealth Fusion Systems closes $1B funding round; $4B total raised, SPARC near completion Funding Nscale acquires Ray platform steward Anyscale for $1.65B; closes loop on full-stack AI cloud Policy U.S. Commerce Dept. takes equity stakes in seven chip/compute firms for $870M in R&D funding Market Anthropic bankers begin investor meetings, targets October 2026 IPO at $965B valuation
Funding

NAVER, NVIDIA, Brookfield expand Korea AI factory to 200MW with $10B investment

NAVER, NVIDIA, and Brookfield announced on July 25, 2026, a $10 billion investment to expand South Korea's sovereign AI factory infrastructure from 55 megawatts to 200 megawatts by 2028 at NAVER's GAK Sejong hyperscale data center. The financing breaks down as: NVIDIA committing $1 billion direct equity investment into NAVER; Brookfield entering a nonbinding term sheet for up to $9 billion; and NAVER funding the remainder. The announcement, made during South Korean President Jae-myung Lee's AI Summit visit to San Francisco, triples the capacity announced just six weeks prior and positions Korea as a leading AI infrastructure hub outside the US.

The 200-megawatt facility will feature NVIDIA Vera Rubin and Blackwell accelerators and serve as a sovereign AI compute pool for Korean startups, enterprises, government, and US-based AI innovators. NAVER's long-term ambition is gigawatt-scale capacity; the 200MW phase represents 20% of NAVER's KRW 550 trillion ($377B USD) national AI commitment announced in late June 2026, part of a tripartite national megaproject with SK Group and GS Group targeting 8.4 gigawatts by 2029. Brookfield brings $100B in assets under management across the AI infrastructure value chain globally.

For practitioners: This signals Seoul's willingness to compete on capex intensity for sovereign AI capabilities, matching US/China scale. Korea is betting government backing + NVIDIA tech + hyperscaler-grade operations = cost parity or advantage versus US hyperscaler pricing. The open variable: pricing. No public rate structure announced; if compute costs NVIDIA-parity USD, the 'sovereign' framing dissolves. Monitor Korea's AI startup adoption rates and capital efficiency curves starting 2028. Watch for similar playbooks in Europe (EU Gigafactories) and Southeast Asia.

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