Naver widens France AI ties with Europe-focused factory push

Naver is aiming to strengthen its artificial intelligence (AI) partnerships with France, presenting potential collaborations on AI infrastructure, industry-specific systems, and cultural content during President Lee Jae Myung's stay in the country. Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon and Naver Cloud CEO Kim Yu-won engaged with executives from French firms and organizations in media, information technology, energy, mobility, and finance during Lee's visit.

At a Korea-France Business Roundtable in France on Tuesday, Choi unveiled three potential areas of cooperation: global AI infrastructure, industry-specific AI centered around data sovereignty and security, and cultural content. According to Choi, Naver seeks to integrate France's reliable energy infrastructure with its expertise in constructing AI ecosystems to create AI factories that European entities and startups could leverage.

Naver recently disclosed plans to collaborate with Nvidia and Brookfield on constructing over 1 gigawatt of global AI factory capacity. Additionally, Choi highlighted Naver's development of AI systems customized for finance and nuclear power, such as BOKI in partnership with Bank of Korea and Hy-NuRI with Korea Hydro.