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From left: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Naver Board Chairman Lee Hae-jin participate in a fan communication event using a virtual football stadium background at the "Vision Studio," a virtual studio located inside Naver's 1784 headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, on June 8. / Courtesy of Naver

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, will visit South Korea on June 15 to meet with Naver’s top management. The visit comes just a week after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met with Naver Board Chairman Lee Hae-jin on June 8. With the heads of two of the global AI industry's most prominent companies visiting Naver in close succession, the market is casting a renewed spotlight on the company's value.

According to industry sources on June 12, Altman plans to meet with officials from major South Korean tech companies, including Naver, Kakao, and Samsung Electronics, during his trip to discuss AI collaboration. The meeting at Naver is drawing intense industry interest as it follows closely on the heels of Nvidia CEO Huang's recent announcement of a large-scale partnership with Naver to build AI factories.

Industry observers suggest that OpenAI is likely drawn to Naver's data assets and service competitiveness. While the specific agenda has not been disclosed, Naver has accumulated vast user data across a diverse suite of services, including search, e-commerce, content platforms, and online communities. As the generative AI race shifts toward data acquisition, these assets are emerging as Naver’s core strength.

At a media roundtable last month, Naver officially unveiled its "Product-Native LLM" strategy, which focuses on optimizing AI models for specific service environments like search, shopping, maps, and reservations. Rather than relying on a single general-purpose model, Naver intends to refine its AI performance using specialized data generated within its own ecosystem. Naver boasts its own proprietary AI models alongside a creator network of 20 million users, an annual output of 630 million content pieces, and hyper-scale data center infrastructure.

Furthermore, Naver operates a fully integrated ecosystem where it can directly test and apply its AI technologies to everyday consumer services. A Naver representative explained, "The competitive landscape of the AI industry is evolving rapidly. While the focus in the past was on building more powerful base models, the key differentiator now is how much high-quality data, operational experience, and supporting infrastructure a company can command."

Leveraging this edge, Naver outlined a strategy to evolve its AI search from simple answer generation into "Agentic AI," which seamlessly connects user queries to actual bookings and purchases. This approach allows the AI to execute transactions on behalf of the user rather than just providing information.

The global AI community's growing interest in Naver was also reflected in recent remarks by Nvidia's Huang. During his visit to Naver’s 1784 headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, on June 8, Huang described Naver as a "world-class AI company." He proposed several areas of collaboration, including Naver's participation in Nvidia’s open AI model alliance, the Nemotron Alliance, as well as joint efforts in constructing AI factories and advancing robotics. Explaining his choice to partner with Naver, Huang noted that the company houses "world-class cloud infrastructure and AI talent."

An industry insider remarked, "While Nvidia approached Naver as an AI infrastructure partner, OpenAI is expected to explore collaboration through the lens of data and service ecosystems," adding that "Naver’s comprehensive competitiveness—spanning AI models, data, services, and infrastructure all at once—is making it a prime destination for global AI giants."

                                                                                                           Lee Seo-yeon