Two gigawatts, 200 megawatts and one nonbinding term sheet

One day, two figures

Two announcements came out of the San Francisco summit on July 24. In the first, SK Group and NVIDIA announced a partnership of more than $500 billion, covering SK Telecom's 2-gigawatt AI cloud on NVIDIA Vera Rubin hardware with SK hynix HBM4 memory, and a target of bringing the first facility online in 2027. The release does not break the $500 billion into line items or years.^[1]

In the second, NAVER, NVIDIA and Brookfield said they plan to grow the NVIDIA DSX buildout at the GAK Sejong data centre from 55 megawatts to 200 megawatts by 2028. Here the financing structure is written down: NVIDIA's $1 billion investment is conditional on NAVER securing at least $9 billion in committed financing, Brookfield's contribution of up to $9 billion rests on a nonbinding term sheet, and NAVER funds the remainder.^[2]

The milestone ladder

Put the numbers on one denominator. The 2 gigawatts and the 200 megawatts differ by a factor of ten, and both are announced capacity today — not contracted, not built, not energised. What separates them is the condition rather than the date: on the NAVER side a financing threshold is written explicitly in front of the 200 megawatts, while on the SK side the announcement does not say what contracts the 2 gigawatts rests on.^{[1], [2]}

That does not make the NAVER arm the weaker one; if anything, a written condition is what makes it trackable. An undisclosed condition is not an absent condition: the SK structure may well be locked in through internal agreements and simply left out of the release. What can be measured is only the published condition, and today the only published threshold is NAVER's.^{[1], [2]}

The threshold to watch

The observable event that follows is this: NAVER announcing at least $9 billion in committed financing, and Brookfield's term sheet converting into a binding commitment. If that happens, the 200-megawatt plan moves from announced capacity to financed capacity and NVIDIA's $1 billion meets its condition. If no such statement arrives by December 31, 2026, the plan stays on paper.^[2]

The matching threshold on the SK side is the first facility coming online in 2027, but a series of intermediate steps sits in between and none of them is dated in the announcement. On the memory side the gap between an HBM4 commitment and shipped memory matters: a codevelopment agreement is not the same as stacks manufactured and delivered.^[1]