Kakao chooses AI services over costly infrastructure

Kakao has ruled out entering the capital-intensive AI infrastructure business, betting instead on consumer services built into KakaoTalk, its dominant mobile messenger. During its second-quarter earnings call Thursday, the Korean platform operator said it had considered AI data centers and GPU cloud services but concluded they offered little competitive advantage. “We determined that the infrastructure layer is not where Kakao can become most competitive in the AI era,” CEO Chung Shin-a said. “K