Lee Hae-jin, the founder of NAVER, is returning as the chairman of the board. This marks his return to the board after seven years. It is interpreted as his intention to oversee NAVER’s AI business directly, as the AI ecosystem has rapidly evolved following the recent Deep Sickness (DeepSeek) Shock.
According to the IT industry on the 5th, NAVER’s board is set to present a proposal for Lee Hae-jin, the founder and Global Investment Officer (GIO), to rejoin as an internal director at the upcoming shareholders’ meeting. If he is appointed as an internal director at the shareholders’ meeting scheduled for March, it is expected that he will take on the role of chairman of the board.
Currently, the “economies of scale” principle has been broken following the Deep Sickness Shock originating from China. With the removal of the astronomical cost barrier, the greatest hurdle to AI entry, it is anticipated that countries worldwide will accelerate their responses to AI.
NAVER possesses the HyperCLOVA X, its self-developed generative AI model. The strategy is to nurture it into a native “sovereign AI” with strengths in the Korean language and culture. Upon returning to NAVER’s board, Lee is expected to focus first on strengthening AI competitiveness.
Lee has the experience of entering the market as a latecomer when Yahoo and Google dominated the domestic search market, ultimately establishing NAVER as a leading search engine in South Korea. He redefined the existing search market with a search engine specialized in Korean and the “Knowledge iN” service, where users could directly ask and answer questions.
Meanwhile, a representative of NAVER stated, “We cannot disclose details as it is a disclosure matter.”