Naver has formally proposed artificial intelligence infrastructure cooperation targeting the European market to French companies and institutions. The vision is to jointly build an “AI Factory” that European enterprises and startups can leverage, combining France’s stable energy base with Naver’s own AI ecosystem experience.<\/p>\n
The proposal was made on the occasion of President Lee Jae-myung’s state visit to France. According to Naver on September 9, CEO Choi Soo-yeon and Kim Yoo-won, CEO of Naver Cloud, held a series of meetings with CEOs of major French companies across media, IT, energy, mobility, and finance during the visit, exploring cooperation opportunities in three areas: AI infrastructure, industry-specific AI, and content.<\/p>\n
Choi presented this cooperation direction in her opening remarks at the Korea-France Business Roundtable held on September 8 (local time). Referencing Naver’s plan to build a global AI factory of over 1GW capacity with Nvidia and Brookfield, she said, “We want to combine France’s stable energy infrastructure with Naver’s AI ecosystem experience to jointly create an AI Factory that European companies and startups can utilize.”<\/p>\n
In the industry-specific AI space, Naver unveiled a strategy to transplant application cases accumulated in South Korea to French companies and institutions. The company cited BOKI, a finance-specialized AI built in cooperation with the Bank of Korea, and Hy-NuRI, a nuclear power-specialized AI developed with Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power using an isolated external network, as representative examples, pledging to support industry-specific AI buildouts that ensure data sovereignty and security.<\/p>\n
Naver has already been using France as its European base for AI research and investment. Naver Labs Europe in Grenoble is conducting research on robotics AI and multimodal foundation models, and the company has been cooperating with Mistral AI\u2014the French AI firm it invested in during 2024\u2014in manufacturing-specialized sovereign AI.<\/p>\n
MOU with INA on Audiovisual Archive AI Cooperation<\/p>\n
On the occasion of this visit, Naver signed a strategic memorandum of understanding (MOU) with France’s National Audiovisual Institute (INA). The agreement calls for jointly exploring ways to apply Naver’s AI technology to INA’s vast audiovisual cultural heritage archive, enabling efficient content analysis and organization while making it easier for users to search and utilize relevant materials.<\/p>\n
In the content sector, Naver is expanding cooperation on the back of Naver Webtoon’s success in France. Naver Webtoon has already launched more than 70 original titles in the French market, building a readership of over 2 million. Citing Webtoon’s global platform and technical capabilities including Toon Radar, its copyright-protection AI, Choi said, “We want to cooperate so that works created jointly by creators from both countries can reach readers around the world.”<\/p>\n
Expanding Investment Through $100 Million IP Fund<\/p>\n
On September 7 (local time), Choi spoke at the Lumi\u00e8re Summit, an international film and audiovisual summit held in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in southern France, where she introduced the IP Adaptation Fund\u2014a $100 million (approximately 130 billion won) global content fund jointly established by Naver and Webtoon Entertainment.<\/p>\n
At the event, she announced plans to actively pursue direct investments so that creators’ intellectual property can expand into film, animation, and games, growing into global franchises. The plan is to deploy capital toward converting webtoon-original IP into global entertainment content.<\/p>\n
Industry observers note that the cooperation proposals made during this French visit could mark an inflection point for Naver’s AI business as it expands beyond South Korea into the European market. France, in particular, offers stable power supply given its high share of nuclear energy, and with the European Union strengthening data sovereignty policies, demand for sovereign AI is growing rapidly.<\/p>\n
If Naver’s AI factory project with Nvidia and Brookfield is sited in France, it is expected to serve as a forward operating base for AI infrastructure business targeting European enterprises and startups. Specific investment amounts, timelines, and participating companies, however, have not yet been finalized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Naver has formally proposed artificial intelligence infrastructure cooperation targeting the European market to French companies and institutions. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[623],"tags":[48359,661,75258,75259,42017,146,42376,657,6496,2295],"class_list":["post-148549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-naver","tag-brookfield","tag-choi-soo-yeon","tag-frances-national-audiovisual-institute-ina","tag-ip-adaptation-fund","tag-kim-yoo-won","tag-lee-jae-myung","tag-mistral-ai","tag-naver","tag-naver-webtoon","tag-nvidia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}