Naver, a Korean technology company whose interests include internet, artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing, has announced that it will build a next-generation AI data centre in Morocco as part of a consortium with AI tech giant Nvidia, AI infrastructure specialist Nexus Core Systems, and global investment firm Lloyd Capital.
The consortium aims to construct a 500-megawatt renewable energy-based data centre in Morocco to operate sovereign AI computing services across the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region. Naver says that Morocco’s geographical advantages – it is 15 kilometres from Europe and directly connected by multiple submarine optical cables – influenced the site selection.
Naver Cloud will participate as a platform operator for the data centre, along with Nexus Core Systems and Lloyd Capital. The aim is to provide integrated AI services and applications based on an advanced cloud platform.
Data sovereignty is seen as a requirement of this project, so Naver will establish a sovereign cloud and AI structure that can independently perform all processes – from data storage to processing and operation – locally.
The first phase of the project will begin in the fourth quarter of this year, with the construction of a 40-megawatt AI supercomputing infrastructure, equipped, like a recently announced Armenian project, with Nvidia’s latest Blackwell (GB200) GPUs, by the end of the year. It is expected to expand to a maximum of 500 megawatts in stages thereafter.
The consortium says it has secured a sustainable and stable power infrastructure by signing a strategic renewable energy supply contract with UAE-headquartered international power producer TAQA.
