Kakao Games said on the 2nd that it made a strategic investment in BackendX, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based corporations for backend development and operations automation services. The backend is a system that handles the software's behind-the-scenes functions that are not directly visible to users, such as data processing and storage, server operations, and user authentication.
BackendX has technology that can create software blueprints through conversation (natural language) and automatically build, deploy, and operate the backend through a pipeline of more than 50 AI agents. It is a corporations founded last July by CEO Moon Dae-kyung, who served as head of new technology development and Head of Team for servers at Nexon Korea, and as CEO of iFunFactory, a game server engine specialist (sold management control to Coinone in 2018).
Kakao Games said it decided to invest after highly evaluating BackendX's potential, which holds a backend solution capable of multiple supports such as service operations and deployment, in step with the rapid growth of the "vibe coding" market that allows even non-professional developers to create apps.
With this, Kakao Games can identify promising indie and small-scale game developers early and expand the potential to link future acquisitions and publishing (distribution) pipelines. In addition, it expects to provide BackendX services to small developers that have signed publishing contracts, strengthen Kakao Games' competitiveness, and ultimately raise capabilities for high-quality game development and services.
Kim Tae-hwan, CEO of Kakao Games, said, "We believe the solution owned by BackendX has great utility value because indie game developers can easily use it in the global market," adding, "In line with the era of AX (AI transformation), we aim to raise companywide AI technology utilization and ultimately contribute to enhancing the company's business competitiveness and corporations value."