[Concall] Naver Choi Suyeon "DeepSeek's Appearance is Innovative... Open to Collaboration with External LLMs"

"DeepSeek shows how a latecomer can catch up with small investments... It is meaningful for us too"
"Focusing on strengthening AI capabilities to prevent widening technology gaps"
"Naver Plus Membership partnership with Netflix leads to 1.5x increase in subscribers"

Choi Soo-yeon, CEO of NAVER, described China's AI large language model (LLM) DeepSeek as "highly innovative."

During a conference call on the morning of the 7th, CEO Choi said about DeepSeek, "It is highly innovative in that it demonstrated a case where a latecomer can catch up with leading companies with relatively small-scale investments," adding, "I think it is also meaningful for us."

Choi Soo-yeon, CEO of Naver, is unveiling the large language model 'Hyper ClovaX' for super-large artificial intelligence (AI) services at the 'Team Naver Conference Dan23' held on the 24th at the Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. Photo by Kang Jin-hyung aymsdream@

She also stated, "We will focus on enhancing multimodal and reasoning capabilities to prevent the technology gap from widening with leading companies," and "We will continue to pursue various cost-efficiency measures."

She made remarks seemingly in reference to Kakao, which decided to adopt an external LLM. On the 4th, Kakao announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI and decided to introduce OpenAI's models into services such as Kanana and KakaoTalk. In response to related questions, CEO Choi said, "Although we have not directly used it in service provision, we are open to collaboration possibilities with global big tech companies' LLMs and various external LLMs, and we are having ongoing discussions to explore these possibilities."

CEO Choi added, "The pace of change has accelerated since DeepSeek," and "NAVER has its own AI models, so we believe we have relative flexibility and can consider adopting other LLMs." NAVER currently uses its self-developed LLM, such as HyperCLOVA X.

Meanwhile, it was revealed that NAVER Plus Membership has been effective in attracting new subscribers through its partnership with Netflix. NAVER formed a partnership with Netflix last year and has been providing Netflix's ad-supported standard plan free of charge to NAVER Plus Membership subscribers since the end of November. Netflix's ad-supported standard plan allows users to watch content in full HD (1080p), supports two simultaneous streams, unlimited mobile gaming, and content downloads. However, ads are shown during content playback.

CEO Choi explained, "Although it has been a short period, the average daily number of new subscribers increased by 1.5 times compared to before due to this partnership," and "Positive effects have been confirmed, such as new subscribers increasing their spending within NAVER Shopping by more than 30% compared to before joining."