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Kakao Shifts to AI-Driven Services, Partners with Coupang Eats After Record Q2 Earnings
When the South Korean internet giant Kakao announced on Thursday that it would abandon its own AI data‑center ambitions in favor of a partnership‑driven approach, the market took notice.
CEO Chung Shin‑a said that building and maintaining an AI infrastructure demands huge upfront and ongoing capital, and that rapid advances in chips and servers make it hard to stay profitable. Instead, Kakao will focus on the layers that sit between the models and the services consumers actually use every day.
The announcement was accompanied by a deal with food‑delivery platform Coupang Eats. Inside KakaoTalk, users will soon be able to order and pay for meals without leaving the chat window. The two companies plan to weave Coupang Eats’ ordering engine into Kakao’s agentic AI so that the model can read the flow of a conversation, spot when a user wants food, and suggest menus based on past preferences.
Unlike a simple API link, the partners will jointly design the roles, responsibilities, business model and operational standards that will govern the integration. The collaboration is intended to move beyond a technical connection into a shared revenue‑sharing and service‑delivery framework.
Kakao has been layering AI into its ecosystem through partnerships. The ChatGPT for Kakao service, launched with OpenAI, already has more than 13 million cumulative subscribers. Chung Shin‑a told investors that monthly active users of AI services on KakaoTalk should top 10 million by the end of 2026, and that AI revenue is expected to become a double‑digit portion of the company’s Talk Biz segment by 2028.
The strategy dovetails with the company’s record‑breaking second‑quarter results. Consolidated revenue hit 2.098 trillion won ($1.48 billion), up 9 percent from a year earlier, while operating profit jumped 36 percent to 277 billion won. The platform business—encompassing KakaoTalk‑based advertising, commerce and other services—grew 17 percent to 1.23 trillion won, and the content arm added 1 percent to 868.2 billion won.
Kakao said the robust earnings reflected "fundamental capabilities to make profits" and that the platform segment was reentering a growth phase. Management expects further margin expansion and aims to surpass its full‑year targets of more than 10 percent revenue growth and a 10 percent operating margin.
KakaoTalk, launched in 2010, has dominated roughly 90 percent of South Korea’s messaging market and evolved into a super‑app that hosts payments, banking, taxi hailing, games and more. Coupang, also founded in 2010 and headquartered in Seattle, runs a retail and food‑delivery service in Korea and is often dubbed the "Amazon of Korea."
The AI‑first stance fits a broader pattern among Korean platform giants. While Naver pursues an internalisation strategy that weaves AI into search, commerce, fintech, cloud and robotics, Kakao is concentrating on consumer‑facing services built on top of AI models.
By embedding AI into everyday transactions, the partnership is expected to deepen user engagement inside KakaoTalk and broaden the company’s revenue mix. Kakao’s next steps will include monitoring the performance of the AI‑enabled ordering feature, refining the joint business model with Coupang Eats, and continuing to grow its AI user base. Investors will watch the upcoming earnings call for signs of sustained profitability and the partnership’s impact on revenue and margins.
The shift away from building its own AI infrastructure toward leveraging existing platforms underscores Kakao’s intent to deliver value to consumers while sidestepping the high capital outlays required for data centers and cloud services.
CEO Chung Shin‑a said that building and maintaining an AI infrastructure demands huge upfront and ongoing capital, and that rapid advances in chips and servers make it hard to stay profitable. Instead, Kakao will focus on the layers that sit between the models and the services consumers actually use every day.
The announcement was accompanied by a deal with food‑delivery platform Coupang Eats. Inside KakaoTalk, users will soon be able to order and pay for meals without leaving the chat window. The two companies plan to weave Coupang Eats’ ordering engine into Kakao’s agentic AI so that the model can read the flow of a conversation, spot when a user wants food, and suggest menus based on past preferences.
Unlike a simple API link, the partners will jointly design the roles, responsibilities, business model and operational standards that will govern the integration. The collaboration is intended to move beyond a technical connection into a shared revenue‑sharing and service‑delivery framework.
Kakao has been layering AI into its ecosystem through partnerships. The ChatGPT for Kakao service, launched with OpenAI, already has more than 13 million cumulative subscribers. Chung Shin‑a told investors that monthly active users of AI services on KakaoTalk should top 10 million by the end of 2026, and that AI revenue is expected to become a double‑digit portion of the company’s Talk Biz segment by 2028.
The strategy dovetails with the company’s record‑breaking second‑quarter results. Consolidated revenue hit 2.098 trillion won ($1.48 billion), up 9 percent from a year earlier, while operating profit jumped 36 percent to 277 billion won. The platform business—encompassing KakaoTalk‑based advertising, commerce and other services—grew 17 percent to 1.23 trillion won, and the content arm added 1 percent to 868.2 billion won.
Kakao said the robust earnings reflected "fundamental capabilities to make profits" and that the platform segment was reentering a growth phase. Management expects further margin expansion and aims to surpass its full‑year targets of more than 10 percent revenue growth and a 10 percent operating margin.
KakaoTalk, launched in 2010, has dominated roughly 90 percent of South Korea’s messaging market and evolved into a super‑app that hosts payments, banking, taxi hailing, games and more. Coupang, also founded in 2010 and headquartered in Seattle, runs a retail and food‑delivery service in Korea and is often dubbed the "Amazon of Korea."
The AI‑first stance fits a broader pattern among Korean platform giants. While Naver pursues an internalisation strategy that weaves AI into search, commerce, fintech, cloud and robotics, Kakao is concentrating on consumer‑facing services built on top of AI models.
By embedding AI into everyday transactions, the partnership is expected to deepen user engagement inside KakaoTalk and broaden the company’s revenue mix. Kakao’s next steps will include monitoring the performance of the AI‑enabled ordering feature, refining the joint business model with Coupang Eats, and continuing to grow its AI user base. Investors will watch the upcoming earnings call for signs of sustained profitability and the partnership’s impact on revenue and margins.
The shift away from building its own AI infrastructure toward leveraging existing platforms underscores Kakao’s intent to deliver value to consumers while sidestepping the high capital outlays required for data centers and cloud services.
