Kakao's business-to-business (B2B) affiliate Kakao Enterprise has picked division head Lee Jae-han as the next CEO. The move is seen as an effort to stabilize an organization shaken by labor-management conflict while accelerating growth in its cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure businesses.
Kakao Enterprise said on the 22nd that its board of directors appointed Lee as CEO-designate. Lee will formally take the helm after an extraordinary shareholders meeting and board meeting in Aug.
At the company, Lee has successively led the cloud infrastructure and digital transformation (DX) divisions and the business division, linking technology strategy to business. During his time at Kakao, Lee led the systems engineering organization, overseeing the design and operation of the KakaoTalk infrastructure architecture.
CEO Lee Won-ju, who took office in Mar. last year, stepped down after about one year and four months for personal reasons. As strikes over performance bonuses continued at Kakao affiliates, Kakao Enterprise also joined the dispute, but it has effectively wrapped up wage talks recently and entered the final stage of ending the strike.
The company plans to steady the organization on the back of the new CEO's technical expertise and management experience and to capture demand for industry-wide AI transformation (AX).
Kakao Enterprise has been strengthening its AI infrastructure business, recently unveiling a "hybrid GPUaaS" in which Kakao Cloud, which it builds and operates, utilizes customers' graphics processing units (GPUs). This year, to support AI transformation for small and midsize businesses in South Jeolla Province, it secured Nvidia B200 GPUs and is also partnering with the National Pension Service (NPS) to build GPU servers and create an AI model testbed environment.