Lee Hae-jin, Naver’s founder, has returned to the forefront of management after 8 years and is focusing on AI innovation alongside CEO Choi Soo-yeon, who successfully renewed her term. Under Lee’s leadership, the “On-Service AI” strategy, which integrates AI across Naver’s services, is expected to be fully implemented. The company’s overseas expansion, under the “Sovereign AI” strategy, is also anticipated to gain momentum.
On March 26, Naver held its regular shareholders’ meeting at its Green Factory in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, and approved the appointment of Lee as an internal director. Following his appointment as an internal director, Lee ascended to the chairman position through the board. He stepped down from his previous role as Global Investment Officer (GIO) to focus solely on board activities.
Lee’s return to the board marks approximately 8 years since he stepped down in March 2017, stating his intention to focus solely on company business, and resigned as a registered director the following year after 19 years. Since leaving the board, he has concentrated on creating significant visions, including overseas business.
After returning to the board, Lee is expected to particularly focus on Naver’s AI business. He stated, “Naver has a sense of mission as a company that will lead the AI era,” and explained, “The key to Naver’s success in overcoming the challenges of the mobile environment, after starting in the internet era, was the passion to transform innovative technology into services most needed by users and Naver’s unique determination to fight differently against companies with larger markets and capital.” He continued, “I will encourage and support the young leaders who bear the heavy responsibility of leading Naver in advanced technology fields to always place users and technology at the center, to boldly attempt and confidently challenge.”
Lee, speaking with reporters after the shareholders’ meeting, said, “Naver is a company that has endured and survived for 25 years against big tech like Google,” and added, “We are challenging new markets with Naver’s unique technology in search, short form, and AI.”
CEO Choi, who successfully filled Lee’s absence by surpassing 10 trillion won in annual sales last year, is expected to lead external growth by handling AI innovation and new business alongside Lee.
Naver is predicted to focus its capabilities on the On-Service AI strategy, which integrates AI into all services. Naver will launch the AI search service “AI Briefing,” which summarizes search results, on March 27. It also plans to introduce an AI agent (assistant) service specialized in commerce within the year. The commerce AI agent will be utilized in consumer-to-consumer (C2C) services like Poshmark and Cream. CEO Choi stated, “AI technology should create tangible changes that users can actually feel by naturally blending into key services like search, advertising, and commerce content, rather than being an independent service,” and emphasized, “Ultimately, it will evolve in a direction that maximizes customer benefits across all services.”
Naver is also committed to expanding its global territory. To this end, it plans to accelerate the execution of the Sovereign AI strategy, focusing on non-Western countries like those in the Middle East. Naver is developing a large language model (LLM) based on Arabic in Saudi Arabia and plans to target the Southeast Asian market in collaboration with Nvidia. Lee emphasized, “It’s very sad for the world to use only one or two AIs,” and stated, “Naver’s mission is to contribute to the diversity of the internet.” CEO Choi added, “Creating another success story following the examples of Line and Webtoon is the mission entrusted to us.”
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