NAVER said it will host Team NAVER's integrated conference "DAN25" from the 6th to the 7th at the COEX Grand Ballroom in Samseong-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul.
NAVER said it will bring AI agents to the forefront of its key services, and also unveiled a two-track AI strategy spanning services to B2B (business-to-business), such as boosting competitiveness in AI transformation (AX) for core manufacturing industries including semiconductors, autos, and shipbuilding.
Opening the keynote session, CEO Choi Soo-yeon said, "Over the past year, Team NAVER has integrated AI into key services such as search, shopping, local, and finance with proprietary technology, resulting in positive signals including increased user satisfaction and driving revenue growth."
NAVER said it will leverage its accumulated experience and technology to begin with shopping and then sequentially roll out advanced agents across key services such as search and ads. In the first quarter of next year, the shopping agent for the AI shopping service "NAVER Plus Store" is slated to launch. In the second quarter, it plans to unveil "AI Tab," which evolves the integrated search service into an AI agent–based experience.
To that end, the company built "Agent N," which unifies data and technology infrastructure across services into one. Agent N is designed to deepen vertical AI capabilities accumulated through "On-service AI," understand user context, predict and propose next actions, and carry them out end to end.
Chief Operating Officer Kim Beom-joon, who is leading the project to advance "On-service AI" into "Agent N," presented a case where Agent N was implemented in a live service and led through to purchase and payment.
Kim said, "Leveraging NAVER's unique advantage of securing diverse types of metadata, we have built a highly reliable data infrastructure for the shopping agent, including reviews that only actual buyers and bookers can leave and inventory data directly tied to sellers, and we have also put in place a technical verification framework to analyze it."
NAVER also invested in an AI agent ecosystem for creators and business partners. Starting next year, NAVER will sequentially unveil the integrated business agent "Agent N for Business."
Advertising head Lee Jong-min said, "The NAVER Business Agent is an AI solution for all operators across shopping, ads, and Place, integrating previously fragmented operator solutions and data into a single business hub so operators can analyze their business environment based on AI and easily diagnose and improve their status."
NAVER will also support creators so they can continue new creative experiments using advanced technologies such as AI and Extended Reality (XR).
Lee Jae-hoo, head of the NAVER app service, said, "Through AI and XR technologies, creators will expand the realm of creation, and users will be able to experience ultra-immersive, ultra-realistic content." To that end, NAVER will continue to expand collaboration with corporations across diverse areas such as games, music, and OTT.
NAVER Cloud unveiled its industrial AI strategy centered on industry-specific AI (vertical AI) and global market expansion. CEO Kim Yu-won said, "AI is the core infrastructure that determines industrial competitiveness," adding, "As a company that understands its own country's language, data, and industrial structure most deeply, we are building vertical AI models by industry based on 'Sovereign AI 2.0.'"
NAVER said it will aggressively expand investments in data centers and computing to bolster AI ecosystem competitiveness, aiming for the country's largest and top-tier infrastructure. First, it plans to invest more than 1 trillion won in graphics processing units (GPUs) by 2026, and soon a test bed for "physical AI" linking NAVER's second headquarters 1784 and each Sejong data center will go into full operation.
Choi said, "On top of the solid competitiveness of Korea's core manufacturing industries such as semiconductors, autos, and shipbuilding, NAVER will add its unrivaled AI software capabilities to accelerate AI transformation and innovation across Korean industry," and added, "Based on full-stack AI technology capabilities, we will help Korea leap into the ranks of the world's top three AI powers."