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TEAM NAVER Broadens AI Cooperation with France, Proposes AI Factory Partnership for Europe

- NAVER CEO Choi Soo-yeon outlines a vision for collaboration on AI factories, industry-specific AI and content at the Korea–France Business Roundtable

- Choi outlines plans to expand content investment to support creators’ global growth, while NAVER signs an AI technology cooperation MOU with France’s national audiovisual institute

September 9, 2026

During President Lee Jae Myung’s visit to France, TEAM NAVER explored opportunities to expand business cooperation with leading French companies and institutions, focusing on AI.

Choi Soo-yeon, NAVER CEO, and Kim Yu-won, CEO of NAVER Cloud, met with business leaders, including CEOs of leading French companies in media, IT, energy, mobility and finance, to explore collaboration on AI infrastructure, industry-specific AI and content.

■ Choi Soo-yeon Calls for Active Cooperation with French Institutions and Companies on AI Infrastructure and Industry-Specific AI

In her opening remarks at the Korea–France Business Roundtable on September 8 (local time), Choi highlighted three areas for collaboration: ▲global AI infrastructure, ▲industry-specific AI that safeguards data sovereignty and security, and ▲cultural content.

Choi noted that NAVER recently announced plans with NVIDIA and Brookfield to build global AI factories with at least 1 GW of capacity. “We would like to combine France’s reliable energy supply with NAVER’s experience in the AI ecosystem to jointly build AI factories for European businesses and startups,” she said.

Choi also offered to help French companies and institutions build secure, reliable AI tailored to their industries. She cited NAVER’s experience in combining AI with industry data and expertise for practical use, including BOKI, a finance-specific AI developed with the Bank of Korea, and Hy-NuRI, an AI system for nuclear power operations developed with Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power that operates on a network isolated from external networks.

Turning to content, Choi highlighted NAVER WEBTOON’s achievements in France, where it has introduced at least 70 original titles and attracted at least 2 million readers. “We would like to work together to bring stories by creators from both Korea and France to readers worldwide, drawing on WEBTOON’s global platform and technological capabilities, including its copyright protection AI, Toon Radar,” she said.

■ Choi Soo-yeon Highlights US$100 Million IP Adaptation Fund to Expand Support for Creators at Lumière Summit

Choi also spoke at the Lumière Summit, an international film and audiovisual summit held in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in southern France on September 7 (local time), the day before the business roundtable.

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At the summit, Choi introduced the IP Adaptation Fund, a US$100 million global content fund jointly established by NAVER and WEBTOON Entertainment to support creators’ international growth. She said the companies would actively pursue direct investments to help creators’ stories grow into global franchises spanning video content, animation and games.

During the presidential visit, NAVER also signed a strategic memorandum of understanding (MOU) with France’s National Audiovisual Institute (INA) to apply AI technology to audiovisual heritage archives. The two parties plan to explore how NAVER’s AI can help analyze and organize INA’s extensive audiovisual archives more efficiently and make it easier for users to find and use the materials they need.

NAVER has built an extensive research and collaboration network in France, its European hub for AI research and investment. NAVER LABS Europe (NLE), based in Grenoble, conducts advanced research in areas including robotics AI and multimodal foundation models. NAVER also continues to collaborate on sovereign AI for manufacturing with Mistral AI, a promising AI company in which it invested in 2024. (End)