Naver achieves record-breaking quarterly revenue, with profits increasing by 10%
South Korean tech giant Naver is broadening its global presence in the AI sector, aiming to provide reliability and stability that only Naver can offer. CEO Choi Soo-yeon emphasized the company's long-term growth strategy, built on years of investment in AI technology.
Naver's global expansion of its sovereign AI business strategy focuses on developing advanced AI infrastructure, including large AI data centers, proprietary large language models, and cutting-edge GPU technology. The company is leveraging international acquisitions and partnerships to achieve this goal.
Data Center Development
Naver is building significant AI data center capacity globally. A notable example is the 500MW AI data center in Morocco, equipped with NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, aimed at serving European markets with cost-efficient and culturally tailored AI services. The company is also investing in South Korea to expand sovereign AI infrastructure supported by the Seoul government.
Large Language Models
Naver has developed its own family of AI models called HyperCLOVA X, positioning itself competitively in South Korea’s sovereign AI initiative. The company is promoting these models both domestically and internationally, targeting countries in the Middle East and Southeast Asia for large language model adoption and AI ecosystem building.
Advanced GPU Infrastructure
Integrating state-of-the-art NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs in data centers enhances Naver's AI computing capacity, supporting sophisticated AI workloads like large-scale language understanding and AI-driven commerce systems. This adoption of high-performance GPUs is central to maintaining competitive AI processing speed and efficiency.
Global Expansion via Acquisitions and Ecosystem Integration
Naver has acquired platforms such as Spain's Wallapop and the U.S.’s Poshmark, gaining access to diverse consumer data that strengthens its AI models for cross-border e-commerce. These platforms contribute valuable data on consumer preferences, feeding AI-driven personalization and recommendation engines across different regions.
AI-Driven Commerce and Monetization
With AI-integrated tools like AI Briefing and the Naver Plus Store app, the company is expanding its commerce segment leveraging AI for personalized shopping and logistics, driving significant revenue growth.
R&D and Innovation Funding
Naver reinvests 20–25% of its revenue into AI R&D and operates a $1 trillion Impact Fund to boost domestic AI innovation, cultivate startups, and enhance its AI ecosystem, ensuring sustained long-term AI leadership.
In the second quarter, Naver posted an operating profit of 521.6 billion won ($376.6 million) and sales of 2.92 trillion won, a record high for a single quarter. The company's revenue came from its search platform (1.04 trillion won), commerce (861.1 billion won), fintech (411.7 billion won), content (474 billion won), and enterprise (131.7 billion won).
CEO Choi Soo-yeon expressed strong confidence in the company's AI capabilities and openness to collaboration, especially in initiatives like the national LLM project. Choi also reiterated Naver's technological independence, aiming to meet the AI sovereignty needs of overseas governments and institutions.
Artificial intelligence technology is instrumental to Naver's global expansion, as they build significant AI data center capacity globally, such as the 500MW AI data center in Morocco, leveraging NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs to serve European markets with cost-efficient and culturally tailored AI services.
Furthermore, Naver has strategically invested in the development of its own large language models, like HyperCLOVA X, positioning itself competitively in international AI adoption and ecosystem building, targeting countries in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
