South Korea's tech giant Naver is expanding its global cloud footprint with a major AI infrastructure project in Morocco, aiming to offer a sovereign alternative to U.S. tech giants in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, local media reported. On Friday, Naver announced a consortium with Nvidia and AI infrastructure firm Nexus Core Systems to build a next-generation AI data center in Morocco, with a total planned capacity of 500 megawatts. The project takes advantage of Morocco's low electricity costs and extensive undersea cable connections to deliver efficient AI services to Europe. Phase one, a 40-megawatt facility equipped with Nvidia's GB200, will begin construction in the fourth quarter of 2025 and be completed within the year. Naver Cloud will oversee platform operations, with all storage, processing, and operations conducted in Morocco under a sovereign AI framework. «Providing sovereign AI computing services across Europe, the Middle East and Africa is our goal», said a Naver representative. The company sees Morocco as a strategic entry point into Europe, where demand for sovereign cloud infrastructure is growing amid regulatory constraints on U.S. providers. The initiative responds to Europe's data sovereignty concerns under the GDPR, which restricts foreign access to locally stored data, something U.S. firms like AWS, Google, and Microsoft cannot fully guarantee due to the U.S. Cloud Act. The project was unveiled at GTC Paris, where Naver executives met with Moroccan energy partner TAQA and representatives from Lloyd Group.
