Naver Cloud has confirmed completion of a sovereign AI project in Thailand at the end of last year. This marks the first actual paid project following the formalization of its Southeast Asian sovereign AI strategy. In contrast, cooperation with the Philippines and Indonesia appears to have stalled after the signing of memorandums of understanding (MOUs).
According to IT industry sources on the 12th, Naver's subsidiary Naver Cloud completed a paid contract project titled 'Development of Thai Sovereign AI Model and Tourism-Specific AI Agent' with Thailand's Siam AI at the end of last year. The developed Thai-specialized model was released as open source.
Naver Cloud concretized its Southeast Asian sovereign AI strategy at NVIDIA's annual developer event, 'GTC 2025,' held in San Jose, USA, in March last year. At that time, it announced plans to identify partners to jointly develop large language models (LLMs), infrastructure, and applications locally alongside NVIDIA, aiming to achieve visible success cases within the year.
Three public cooperation cases in Southeast Asia were disclosed. Naver Cloud collaborated with Indonesia's Telkom and Cisco in March 2023, signed an MOU with Philippines' Converge ICT Solutions in May 2024, and announced plans in May last year to develop a Thai-specialized LLM and tourism AI agent with Thailand's Siam AI. Only the Thailand project survived.
Regarding cooperation with the Philippines and Indonesia, Naver Cloud stated, "Since the MOU, both parties' business directions and commercial priorities have changed independently, so there are currently no ongoing special collaborations."
The center of overseas AI business remains Saudi Arabia. After winning a contract to build a digital twin platform for Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs in 2023, Naver completed construction in three cities—Mecca, Medina, and Jeddah—in June last year. In May last year, it established a local joint venture named 'Naver Innovation,' and signed a definitive contract for the second phase of the digital twin project in May this year.
However, adoption of the 'digital twin platform as a national standard' has not yet been finalized. Naver Cloud explained, "It is currently under review for adoption as a national standard by the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs." The scale of the second-phase definitive contract and the completion timeline for Riyadh and Dammam construction were not disclosed.
No follow-up results have emerged from Arabic AI or the Morocco AI data center project either. The MOU signed with Rebellion in February last year for joint development of an Arabic LLM has seen no further progress since then. Similarly, there is no progress on the Morocco AI data center, which was planned to be built within 2025 with a capacity of 40MW in Phase 1.
The next variable is the Sejong AI Factory. In its recent second-quarter earnings announcement, Naver revealed plans to build a Phase 1 AI factory with a capacity of 200MW centered on the Sejong data center, aiming to meet sovereign AI demand in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. Naver Cloud explains that the essence of sovereign AI lies not only in data location but also in the capability to build, operate, and control AI systems that align with each country's language, culture, institutions, and regulations.
Naver Cloud's overseas AI business is currently in a phase of building references centered on Saudi Arabia and Thailand. While not all large MOUs have led to definitive contracts and revenue, the company has secured experience in building country-specific language models and digital twins. The next challenge lies in connecting this experience to attracting overseas customers for the Sejong AI Factory and generating actual revenue.
in TECH
