Artificial intelligence (AI) agent startup Liner said on the 20th that it has hired former Kakao Entertainment Global Business Deputy Minister Kang Jeong-gu as head of AI strategy to accelerate its push into the global B2B (business-to-business) market.
Kang worked at global consulting corporations including Bain & Company and Kearney Korea, then served as chief strategy officer (CSO) of Line Thailand, where Kang led the launch and growth of the local delivery platform "LINE MAN." Kang later served as Kakao Entertainment Global Business Deputy Minister and chief operating officer (COO) of U.S.-based Tapas Entertainment, leading expansion in the North American market.
Liner has more than 13 million users in about 220 countries worldwide and provides search services by minimizing AI hallucinations through source-based answers and using advanced context-understanding technology. The company said it plans to expand its B2B business based on this technology and global user base.
Liner is expanding its business scope beyond enterprise search to the enterprise intelligence market. The plan is to build an AI-based work support system that consolidates and analyzes internal corporate knowledge to propose insights and action plans. It aims to target professional service corporations that handle large-scale data, such as consulting, investment, and research and development (R&D), as well as mid-sized and larger global corporations, focusing on the North American and Asian markets.
Kang Jeong-gu, head of AI strategy at Liner, said, "Liner is a team with a solid user base, technology, and execution," adding, "Based on the global business network and strategic experience accumulated over the years, we will expand Liner's technology asset into the enterprise domain and build a customized AI system that increases the speed of corporate decision-making."
Kim Jin-woo, CEO of Liner, said, "Kang Jeong-gu's joining is an important turning point for Liner's strategic leap," adding, "We will evolve into an enterprise intelligence platform that supports not only information search but also analysis and decision-making, and expand results in the global B2B market."
Meanwhile, Liner has supplied a search API to SK Telecom's AI service "adot (A.)" and is expanding global B2B collaborations, including embedding its search engine in HUMAIN, a Saudi Arabian state-funded AI corporation's integrated AI platform "HUMAIN ONE."