Naver to Invest KRW 1 Trillion in AI Content Ecosystem

Seoul, South Korea - Naver Corp. announced Thursday it will invest KRW 1 trillion (approximately USD 666.7 million) over the next five years to support its user-generated content ecosystem and integrate its data with artificial intelligence services.

Chief Data & Contents Officer Kwang-hyun Kim detailed the investment during a media briefing in Seoul, stating the company's strategy focuses on securing high-quality data to serve as the foundation for execution-based AI agents.

As part of the initiative, Naver launched the "Naver Mate" program to compensate creators whose content is used by the company's AI models. 

The program will allocate a total of KRW 20 billion (USD 13.3 million) to approximately 3,000 creators each month based on their citation rates within the platform's AI Briefing feature. Individual payouts will range from KRW 300,000 (USD 200) to KRW 10 million (USD 6,667).

Naver Mate will begin beta operations in June for creators across Naver's Blog, Cafe, Knowledge iN, and Premium Content services, with plans to expand to short-form "Clip" creators in the second half of the year. 

Selected creators will receive official emblems intended to increase content visibility across Naver's search functions.

The company also outlined the expansion of its AI search capabilities. 

The "AI Tab," a conversational search feature launched in a closed beta in April, will open to all PC and mobile users in June. 

The feature accumulated 3 million users during its one-month beta period, according to Naver.

An updated version of the company's visual search tool, Smart Lens, will launch in late June. 

The tool is designed to integrate camera-based searches with execution commands and to function in tandem with AI Briefing and AI Tab. 

The company said its AI Briefing feature, originally launched in March 2025, currently records 30 million monthly users.

Sang-beom Kim, Head of the Search Platform Division, said the company's objective is to transition from AI search to an integrated AI agent capable of executing tasks. 

He noted the system relies on Naver's "Product Native LLM," 10 billion data points, API tools, and harness engineering infrastructure. 

The company confirmed it will deploy its next-generation HyperCLOVA X model in the near future to support these updates.