0
Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon delivers a presentation at the Lumière Summit held in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, southern France, on the 7th (local time). / Naver

Naver is expanding its artificial intelligence business across Europe, using France as its regional hub. The company has proposed jointly establishing AI factories and developing industry-specific AI models to French corporations and institutions, alongside pursuing investment and technological partnerships in the content sector. This reflects an accelerating drive to uncover tangible business opportunities with local enterprises, building on its established AI research and investment track record in France.

On the 9th, Naver announced that, on the occasion of President Lee Jae-myung's state visit to France, it held discussions with French firms spanning the media, IT, energy, mobility, and financial sectors on potential cooperation across AI infrastructure, industry-tailored AI, and digital content. Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon and Naver Cloud CEO Kim Yu-won attended the related events.

During the South Korea-France Business Roundtable held on the 8th (local time), CEO Choi presented an initiative to jointly construct AI factories with French companies. Following Naver's recent plan to develop a global AI factory exceeding 1 gigawatt in capacity in partnership with Nvidia and Brookfield, this initiative envisions utilizing France's energy infrastructure to supply AI computing resources to European businesses and startups.

Choi also highlighted specialized AI models trained on industry-specific data as a key area of collaboration. Drawing on Naver's experience developing BOKI, a finance-tailored AI model for the Bank of Korea, and Hy-NuRI, an air-gapped, nuclear power-specialized AI built for Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, she proposed supporting French corporations and institutions in creating their own domain-specific AI solutions. The primary targets will be sectors where data sovereignty and security are paramount, such as finance and energy.

In the content domain, Naver plans to leverage Naver Webtoon, which has steadily grown its footprint in France. Naver Webtoon has published over 70 local original titles in the country, amassing a readership exceeding 2 million. At the Lumière Summit held in Saint-Paul-de-Vence on the 7th, Choi introduced a 100 million-dollar IP Adaptation Fund established jointly by Naver and Webtoon Entertainment. The fund will invest in projects adapting intellectual property (IP)—such as webtoons—into films, animation, and video games.

Technological cooperation in AI with French public institutions also gained concrete traction. During the presidential visit, Naver signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the National Audiovisual Institute of France (INA). Under the agreement, the two sides will jointly explore technologies to analyze, catalog, search, and utilize INA's audiovisual archives using Naver's AI models.

Naver already maintains an AI research and investment presence in France. Naver Labs Europe, located in Grenoble, conducts research on robotics AI and multimodal foundation models. Furthermore, Naver has been collaborating with French AI startup Mistral AI, in which it invested in 2024, to develop manufacturing-specialized sovereign AI solutions.

                                                                                                            Lee Seo-yeon