{"id":232471,"date":"2026-01-11T11:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T11:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/232471\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T11:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T11:05:08","slug":"south-koreas-google-pitches-ai-alternative-to-us-and-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/232471\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018South Korea\u2019s Google\u2019 pitches AI alternative to US and China"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/p>\n

Naver, the search engine group often called \u201cSouth Korea\u2019s Google\u201d, is pitching its cloud services to countries in the Middle East and south-east Asia as an alternative AI option to US and Chinese technology giants.<\/p>\n

Kim Yuwon, chief executive of Naver Cloud, said the company could be a strong alternative for countries reluctant to use American or Chinese cloud systems out of security concerns. The South Korean group can tailor AI services to individual countries and allow them to maintain control over their data, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTech giants in the US and China are targeting bigger markets with their generic AI models. They don\u2019t have much room for customised services for each country,\u201d Kim told the Financial Times.<\/p>\n

Amazon, Microsoft and Google dominate the cloud computing<\/a> services crucial to AI, controlling more than 60 per cent of the global market, according to Synergy Research Group, while Alibaba and Tencent hold sway in China.<\/p>\n

Countries concerned about Washington being able to access data stored in US companies\u2019 cloud systems have embraced so-called sovereign AI, in which they build or adopt their own proprietary systems and store data locally for faster access and more control.<\/p>\n

Naver<\/a> argues it can be a preferable option for these countries, as it can offer control over more parts of the technology \u201cstack\u201d, ranging from data centres to applications, and \u201cmore autonomy\u201d over data than US counterparts.<\/p>\n

The company, which runs the most widely used search engine in South Korea, has been the largest purchaser of Nvidia chips in its home market, receiving more graphics processing units than Samsung or Hyundai as it aggressively builds AI infrastructure overseas.<\/p>\n

Naver plans to invest more than Won1tn ($690mn) this year to expand its AI infrastructure, including securing 60,000 units of Nvidia\u2019s most advanced Blackwell GPUs as part of South Korea\u2019s plan to buy 260,000 chips from the US company.<\/p>\n

It is running cloud regions in Germany, Japan, Singapore and the US west coast and planning more in Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and the US east coast. It is also building a 500MW data centre in Morocco to deliver sovereign AI capacity.<\/p>\n

Naver\u2019s stock has risen 20 per cent in the past 12 months on expectations for its AI services.<\/p>\n

\u201cCustomisation is very important because each country has different social problems, political context, religious faiths and value systems,\u201d said Kim, adding that the company was focused on markets in the Middle East and south-east Asia, as well as Japan.<\/p>\n

In Saudi Arabia, it is working on \u201cdigital twins\u201d, or virtual copies, of the country\u2019s physical infrastructure in partnership with the National Housing Company. It is in early stage talks with the government and local partners to develop the country\u2019s AI models, build data centres and provide cloud services.<\/p>\n

In Thailand, it is working with Siam AI Cloud, a local tech group, to build a Thai language AI model and launch an AI-powered tourism assistant. In Japan,\u00a0Naver\u00a0is rolling out a service in which an AI system makes wellbeing calls to older adults in the city of Izumo, where 30 per cent of the population is over 65.<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n

\"Samsung<\/a><\/p>\n

Junhyun Kim, an analyst at HSBC, said in a report he expected Naver\u2019s business of renting out GPUs to generate more than Won1tn in revenue by 2030, citing faster than expected commercialisation of technologies such as digital twins and AI cloud systems.<\/p>\n

But Wi Jong-hyun, a business professor at Chung-Ang University in Seoul, said he was sceptical of Naver\u2019s overseas ambitions, given its search engine is not widely used outside South Korea.<\/p>\n

\u201cDeveloping sovereign AI requires a lot of data from those countries. I am not sure how Naver plans to secure data at scale,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNaver failed to export its search engine because it could not build its own database abroad. I am concerned that the company is likely to repeat its failure in exporting AI systems for the same reason.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-232471","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}