OpenAI partners with Kakao in South Korea

OpenAI partners with Kakao in South Korea
OpenAI partners with Kakao in South Korea

On the heels of Chinese AI firm DeepSeek making a huge splash in OpenAI’s American backyard, OpenAI is expanding in Asia, with major commercial deals that will also help it train its AI on more Asian-language content and user behavior — a gateway to doing more business in these markets in the future on its own.

OpenAI unveiled a strategic collaboration with Kakao, the South Korea tech company that operates one of the region’s most popular messaging apps, KakaoTalk.

The move comes one day after SoftBank announced a major commitment to using OpenAI: It has allocated a budget of $3 billion to deploy OpenAI tech across its various group operations and subsidiaries, as well as establish a joint venture, SB OpenAI Japan, to build solutions customized for enterprises in the country.

OpenAI said it will develop artificial intelligence products for South Korea with chat app operator Kakao, unveiling a second major alliance with a high-profile Asian partner this week.

Kakao operates South Korea's dominant messaging app KakaoTalk, which has a whopping 97% domestic market share and has expanded into areas such as e-commerce, payments and gaming. It has positioned AI as a new engine of growth but analysts say it has lagged behind local rival Naver in the AI race.

"We are particularly interested in AI and messaging," Altman told a joint press conference with Kakao CEO Chung Shina in Seoul.

In a whirlwind tour through Asia, OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman also announced a partnership with Japan's SoftBank Group and is, according to sources, scheduled to visit India where he is seeking to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Like SoftBank, Kakao said it would be using technology developed by the ChatGPT creator for its products.

Altman also said many Korean companies will be important contributors to the Stargate data center project, a venture between OpenAI and Oracle ORCL.N to build AI capacity in the United States. He declined to elaborate, saying he wants to keep partnership conversations confidential.