South Korea's internet giants Naver and Kakao, after overhauling their AI businesses in 2025, are accelerating efforts to redefine search and messaging services through agentic AI in 2026. Naver plans to integrate services via its Agent N, while Kakao focuses on a closed-loop ecosystem centered on KakaoTalk. Both aim for AI agents that understand user intent and execute tasks autonomously.
After dedicating 2025 to strengthening AI applications and embedding large language models across their ecosystems, Naver and Kakao are now pushing toward agentic AI to redefine their core search and messaging services.
Agentic AI refers to systems that understand user intent, plan actions independently, and execute tasks without direct prompts. In November 2025, Naver unveiled Agent N, a personalized AI agent designed to integrate services like search, maps, calendar, reservations, and content, translating data into real-world actions.
Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon stated at the company's Dan25 conference in November, "Users will no longer need to worry about which words to type for search. Instead, simply by conversing with Agent N, the AI agent will understand their intent, connect them to the desired content, products and services and even carry out real-world actions on their behalf."
Naver's AI Briefing feature already accounts for over 20 percent of search queries. In 2026, the company plans to launch an AI shopping agent in the first quarter, an AI tab in search results in the second quarter, and Agent N for Business to aid advertisers with automated recommendations and bidding. To scale agentic AI, Naver is investing more than 1 trillion won ($691 million) in GPU and AI infrastructure this year, while operating testbeds linking its Seongnam headquarters and Sejong data center.
Kakao, meanwhile, is building a closed-loop agentic AI ecosystem around its KakaoTalk messenger, which serves nearly 50 million users. Following a 2025 partnership with OpenAI, it launched ChatGPT for Kakao in October, enabling direct access within the app alongside mobility, payments, and other services.
Kakao's proprietary on-device model, Kanana, offers proactive assistance based on conversational context. Kakao CEO Chung Shin-a said at the SK AI Summit in November, "For AI to take the initiative in making suggestions, it is crucial to first understand the user’s situation and status, so Kakao has chosen on-device AI technology in order to provide diverse contextual information in the safest way and at the most necessary moments."
"In particular, because Kakao has conversations, which carry the richest and clearest context, we have implemented systems that enable AI to independently infer what actions to take within that context."
In the first half of 2026, Kakao plans to fully unveil agent-based Kanana in KakaoTalk and Kanana Search, integrating it into services like Melon, Kakao Map, gifting, and reservations, with an open ecosystem for partners. Recently introduced Kanana-2 features enhanced tool-calling and instruction-following. Long-term, Kakao aims for multimodal models handling text, voice, and images, while lightening on-device versions for a conversation-to-execution ecosystem.
In her New Year's message, Chung described 2026 as a new chapter for Kakao's AI and global fandom platform business, evolving generative AI into agentic forms with external infrastructure partnerships. "The year 2026 will be the start of Kakao's new 15 years," she said, pledging audacious AI-driven challenges.
