Naver, Aramco to team up to enter Saudi Arabia

South Korea’s online giant Naver Corp. announced on Wednesday that it signed an agreement with Aramco Digital, a subsidiary of the world's largest oil company Saudi Aramco, to promote digital innovation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The companies will build Sovereign Cloud and super apps optimized for the Middle East region and collaborate on the development of AI based on the Arabic Large Language Model (LLM).

Under the direction of Sovereign AI, Naver plans to leverage its in-house LLM technology to create AI models customized for local culture and language, offering various solutions based on this foundation.

Naver emphasized that, excluding big tech companies in the US and China, it's the only company capable of proposing efficient operation of high-cost LLM, along with optimization technology, infrastructure preparation, and solutions.

The collaboration aims to harness Naver's technologies in cloud, robotics, and digital twins (virtual models) for smart building and smart city construction.

Write to Seung-Woo Lee at leeswoo@hankyung.com