[Featured Stock] Naver Rises on DeepSeek Debut... Expectations for AI Cost Reduction

As Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepSeek unveiled its model R1, expectations are rising that domestic software companies will benefit, leading to a strong performance by Naver.

As of 10:15 a.m. on the 31st, Naver's stock price is trading at 217,000 won, up 6.37% from the previous day. It is interpreted that optimism is emerging in the domestic AI software sector as DeepSeek has developed a high-performance inference model at a low cost, addressing previous controversies over the high costs of AI training.

Choi Seung-ho, a researcher at Sangsangin Securities, said, "The reason DeepSeek shocked the market is that it implied that overwhelmingly high computing resources may not be necessary to implement a high-performance model," adding, "This is advantageous for followers such as domestic companies in the open-source camp."

He continued, "If a high-performance model can be created with low computing resources, the commercialization of software can be accelerated," and explained, "The strength of open source could be an opportunity for domestic companies to narrow the gap with major big tech firms."