Korea Financial Sector Hunts Next AI Investment Target as DeepSeek-Level Candidates Run Short

The Quick Take

• Korea's financial sector is racing to find the 'next DeepSeek' for the National Growth Fund as viable AI investment candidates dry up.
• Naver announced a GW-scale AI factory plan with Nvidia, but its stock gave back all gains in a single session on execution skepticism.
• Doosan Group is being revalued as an AI infrastructure play after Jensen Huang's Korea visit highlighted AI chips, data center power, and physical AI.

Korea's financial ecosystem is navigating a distinctive challenge: the National Growth Fund has narrowed its investment mandate to artificial intelligence, creating intense competition among financial institutions to identify eligible AI companies before the available pool runs dry. The current shortlist — Rebellions, Upstage, FuriosaAI, and DeepX — has already attracted large-scale commitments, and market participants note that the intersection of technical credibility, scalability potential, and institutional investment compatibility is rare. The rush to find 'next DeepSeek-level' candidates is compressing due diligence timelines and inflating pre-money valuations for any company that can credibly claim an AI chip or foundation model angle.

Naver's GW-scale AI factory announcement with Nvidia — targeting ₩20 trillion in AI factory revenue and 1GW infrastructure capacity — attracted initial enthusiasm but the stock surrendered its gains within a day. Market skepticism centers on the distance between strategic vision and executable business model: AI factory infrastructure requires contracted hyperscaler customers to justify capex, and Naver's ability to sign paying customers at GW-scale remains unproven. The pattern mirrors early data-center announcements where capex commitment preceded revenue certainty by years. Meanwhile, Doosan Group is experiencing a revaluation as Jensen Huang's visit spotlighted AI semiconductor capabilities, physical AI, nuclear power, and data-center power infrastructure across multiple Doosan subsidiaries.

The macro variable for Korea's AI investment cycle is the pace of global hyperscaler capex deployment — if Amazon, Microsoft, and Google maintain their 2026 AI infrastructure build-out momentum, downstream demand for Korean AI chip companies and power infrastructure firms remains robust. Watch for Naver's first contracted AI factory customers as the acid test for its strategic pivot. Rebellions and FuriosaAI IPO timelines toward KOSDAQ listing are the key capital markets events that will unlock the National Growth Fund's deployment capacity and signal whether Korea's AI ecosystem can graduate from strategic ambition to commercial-scale delivery.

Synthesized from 5 sources.