Naver to set up Middle Eastern headquarters in Saudi Arabia

Naver Corp., which has been actively seeking to unlock opportunities in the Middle East with its new growth engines artificial intelligence, cloud and robotics, will set up a regional head office in Saudi Arabia this year to lead various tech projects in the region. 

The South Korean information technology giant announced on Monday that it will join the Saudi Arabian government’s Regional HQ (RHQ) program to open its Middle Eastern headquarters, dubbed Naver Arabia, before the end of 2024.

The RHQ Program is a joint initiative by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Investment and the Royal Commission for Riyadh City to lure foreign businesses to the country as part of its Vision 2030 and National Investment Strategy.

Any foreign company setting up its regional head office in a Middle Eastern country will be eligible for an array of state support, including relocation, concierge, facilitation and professional services ranging from housing and personal assistance to business setup, tax consultancy and opening bank accounts.

With the new Middle Eastern headquarters, Naver is expected to join the oil-rich kingdom’s continuing national projects in the cutting-edge technology sector and gain better access to further business opportunities.

The Korean portal giant also plans to form separate joint ventures with multiple partners in Saudi Arabia for different projects, like a digital twin platform JV with Saudi’s Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs (MOMAH).

In October 2023, Naver won a deal estimated at $100 million from MOMAH to build digital twin platforms for Riyadh and four other major cities in the Middle Eastern country.

Digital twin technology creates a virtual representation of a real-world physical product or system for practical purposes such as simulation, integration, testing and maintenance.

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Naver is collaborating with the kingdom country to help the country transition into a smart, futuristic nation under Vision 2030 in other projects.

Saudi Vision 2030 is directed by Mohammed bin Salman, crown prince and prime minister of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to transform the oil-reliant economy into a country powered by future technologies such as AI.

The oil-rich kingdom created a $100 billion fund this year to invest in AI and other technology.

Earlier this month, Naver signed a memorandum of understanding with the Saudi Data & AI Authority (SDAIA), which oversees AI and big data development and leads Saudi Vision 2030 projects, to jointly develop an Arabic large language model (LLM), cloud computing and robotics technologies.

The MoU was signed on the sidelines of the Gain Summit 2024, a global AI summit hosted in Riyadh, attended by Naver founder and Global Investment Officer Lee Hae-jin and Chief Executive Choi Soo-yeon.

The name of another attendee, Chae Seon-ju, Naver’s president of ESG and External Policy, is being floated as the chief of Naver Arabia.

Earlier this year, Naver also added Arabic translation to its AI-driven real-time translation service Papago.

NEW GROWTH ENGINES

In recent years, Korea’s largest internet portal operator has been seeking to foster AI, cloud and robotics technologies as new growth pillars.

Its hyperscale AI platform and LLM HyperCLOVA X lie at the core of the drive. The company introduced the upgraded LLM last summer and pins high hopes on it for its global expansion. 

In November last year, it also opened Asia’s largest data center to accelerate its future growth engines.

The data center in Sejong, the country’s administrative city about 150 kilometers (93 miles) south of Seoul, is equipped with the company’s high-tech capabilities, including AI, cloud, robot and self-driving.

It is built with 600,000 rack units for servers, enough to store 65 exabytes of data.

Naver aims to advance the technology of data centers, core facilities for generative AI, which requires the processing of a large amount of data.

Write to Ji-Eun Jeong at jeong@hankyung.com

Sookyung Seo edited this article.