KB Securities noted that expectations are high for the Korean-style super artificial intelligence (AI) agent platform set to be launched in collaboration with Kakao in the second half of this year. Accordingly, it maintained a 'buy' rating and raised the target price from 49,000 won to 55,000 won, an increase of 12.2%. On the previous day, Kakao's closing price was 41,600 won.
Kakao plans to launch three new AI services by the second half of this year. On the 8th of last month, it began the closed beta test (CBT) of the AI mate 'Kanana' and is preparing for an official release. 'Kana' and 'Nana' are AI mates that understand users' conversations and provide personalized responses.
Lee Sun-hwa, a researcher at KB Securities, said, “If the inability to train the AI model with KakaoTalk conversations due to issues like privacy protection was a drawback, Kanana collects conversation data with user consent and trains it with the AI mate.” She added, “As the conversations accumulate, the AI mate's understanding of the user will improve, enabling it to provide advanced personalized services, which will be helpful in developing future agent platforms.”
She continued, “We plan to introduce a 'Discovery' section in KakaoTalk to increase affluent traffic and boost content consumption, thereby expanding user engagement.” She noted that the goal is to generate more than double the revenue compared to existing formats by providing short-form content and feeds in the Discovery tab, and that after establishing the service, advertising revenue growth is expected to recover to double digits.
The researcher stated, “Kakao has an ecosystem that encompasses not only KakaoTalk, which is used by the entire nation, but also services that cover commerce, fintech, content, mobility, and healthcare.” She expressed that a Korean-style super AI agent platform with excellent reasoning ability and autonomy is expected to emerge by combining Kakao’s everyday services with OpenAI’s advanced AI model.