Record Q3 earnings give the firm confidence to double down on AI integration across daily services

Naver's headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, on Wednesday. (Yonhap)
Naver's headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, on Wednesday. (Yonhap)

South Korean IT giant Naver said Wednesday it will invest more than 1 trillion won ($691 million) in graphic processing units as part of its broader push into physical AI technologies, as its AI-led strategy helped deliver record quarterly earnings in the third quarter this year.

“Our goal is to expand the integration of AI into an even wider range of services,” Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon said during a quarterly earnings call, attributing the company’s rapid growth to its “on-service AI” strategy, which embeds AI across search, commerce and content platforms. “We plan to carry this strategy forward through next year.”

Naver posted sales of 3.14 trillion won for the July-September period, up 15.6 percent from a year earlier and 7.6 percent from the previous quarter, making the first-time quarterly revenue surpassed 3 trillion won.

Operating profit rose 8.6 percent on-year to a record 570.6 billion won, while net income jumped 38.6 percent to 734.7 billion won, the company said.

Revenue by business segment includes 1.06 trillion won from its search platform, 985.5 billion won from commerce, 433.1 billion won from fintech, 509.3 billion won from content and 150 billion won from its enterprise business.

As part of its AI infrastructure expansion, Naver will purchase 60,000 units of Nvidia’s latest Blackwell GPUs, joining the US chipmaker’s broader plan to supply 260,000 units to Korean firms.

The investment will underpin Naver’s long-term ambitions in physical AI, combining robotics, digital twins and large-scale computing to merge digital and physical intelligence, the company said.

“From 2026 onward, we plan to spend over 1 trillion won on GPUs alone, reflecting the expansion of physical AI and new business areas,” Naver Chief Financial Officer Kim Hee-cheol said during the earnings call.

For its record quarterly performance, Choi said the company’s AI initiatives are beginning to yield tangible outcomes. A generative AI shopping assistant will debut next spring, followed by a new AI search tab and an integrated AI agent designed to create a conversational, personalized experience.

Naver’s “AI briefing” feature, which summarizes and contextualizes search results, has expanded coverage of 15 percent of search queries, with plans to reach 20 percent by year-end, the company added.

Choi also explained that Naver Plus Store will increase the proportion of AI-curated recommendations on its site from 31 percent to 80 percent, with the aim of boosting user engagement and conversion rates.

Naver Labs, the company’s R&D arm, also continues to strengthen its robotics and control platform technologies.

“We expect to capture more than 39 percent of the global robotics operating system and control platform market,” Choi said. “We are confident our technology is now at a world-class level.”


herim@heraldcorp.com