Kakao will join hands with Coupang Eats to implement delivery orders and payments through artificial..

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사진 확대 Jung Shin-ah, CEO of Kakao. [Kakao]

Kakao will join hands with Coupang Eats to implement delivery orders and payments through artificial intelligence (AI) agents in KakaoTalk. Users will be able to receive food recommendations and order menus in the KakaoTalk chat window.

“The first field to be linked with Kakao’s agent AI is food delivery,” Kakao CEO Jung Shin-ah said in a conference call to announce second-quarter earnings on the 6th. “We will sign a partnership with Coupang Eats.”

The goal is to implement the entire process from delivery order to payment by connecting AI and Coupang Eats in Kakao Talk through an agent-to-agent linkage (A2A). In addition, AI models in KakaoTalk identify delivery food order intentions in user conversations and suggest menus according to user preferences

When the service is implemented, KakaoTalk’s on-device AI model identifies delivery food order intentions in conversations and proposes menus based on accumulated user preferences. Users can complete orders and payments in the chat room without going to a separate app.

The timing of application has not yet been determined. CEO Chung said, “The two companies are discussing in detail so that the agent AI experience in Talk can be implemented smoothly to actual transactions and plan to implement and introduce actual services as soon as possible.”

Regarding setting the first interworking as a delivery platform, CEO Chung said, “The delivery area is an area where users use it frequently and are relatively less involved, and the experience of ordering and paying quickly and conveniently is highly valuable,” and explained, “It is an area that can clearly show the utility of AI.”

Furthermore, through this partnership, the inflow of new customers and expansion of transactions by partners were presented as expected effects, and if such synergy is confirmed, it will have a positive effect on the expansion of the ecosystem of subsequent partners.

On this day, Kakao announced that it recorded 2.98 trillion won in sales and 277 billion won in operating profit in the second quarter. Compared to the same period last year, sales and operating profit increased by 9% and 36%.

While the current growth is led by advertisements in KakaoTalk, Kakao is paying attention to Agentic AI as a future growth engine. The goal is to grow KakaoTalk, which has a strong user base, into an agent platform and connect various external services so that users can utilize AI services within KakaoTalk.

CEO Chung said, “We plan to introduce new AI experiences in KakaoTalk in the second half of the year,” adding, “We expect that the number of users who use AI services familiarly in KakaoTalk will exceed 10 million by the end of the year.”

“In terms of sales, AI-related sales in TalkBiz will account for double digits in 2028 through revenue sources such as AI service subscription sales, AI commerce transaction fees, and new forms of AI advertising,” he said.

Meanwhile, while major domestic companies such as Naver are investing in AI infrastructure projects called “AI Factory,” Kakao clarified its direction to focus on AI services in the consumer sector instead of such infrastructure projects.

When a related question was asked during a conference call, CEO Chung said, “We thoroughly reviewed the business feasibility, including the AI data center and the GPU cloud market,” and explained, “We judged that Kakao’s area to create the highest competitiveness in the AI era is not the infrastructure layer.”

He added, “AI infrastructure is an area that requires large-scale upfront investment and continuous facility investment, and we judged that it is difficult to ensure high profitability for a long time in the face of competitive supply expansion and supply and demand imbalance.”

Instead, CEO Chung emphasized, “We will focus on the model to the service class to create AI services that the whole nation uses in everyday life.”