Kakao Brain Transitions to Co-CEO System to Strengthen AI Capabilities

Kakao Brain Co-CEOs Ildu Kim (left) and Byunghak Kim.

Kakao is transitioning Kakao Brain to a dual CEO system to strengthen its artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. Alongside building a large-scale AI model, it will develop vertical services utilizing AI technology.

On the 9th, Kakao Brain held an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders and announced on the 12th that it appointed Kim Byung-hak, head of Kakao’s AI Task Force (TF), as the new co-CEO. Kakao Brain will shift to a dual CEO system with the existing CEO Kim Il-du and the newly appointed CEO Kim Byung-hak.

Kakao aims to consolidate its AI capabilities within Kakao Brain starting with this organizational change amid the rapidly evolving AI ecosystem. The global advanced research and large-scale AI model construction projects currently led by CEO Kim Il-du will continue under his leadership.

Newly appointed CEO Kim Byung-hak will leverage his experience in successfully building business models by adding vertical service discovery using appropriate technology in the multimodal language model domain and fine-tuning existing AI models. Although each co-CEO will manage their respective businesses and strategies independently, they plan to closely coordinate on overall business strategy formulation.

Kakao Brain’s goal is to solidify its position as a global specialist company in multimodal generative AI by creating synergy between the two areas under the dual CEO system. It plans to strengthen two key areas: large-scale foundation model construction and pioneering the vertical service market implementing appropriate technology.

Co-CEO Kim Byung-hak stated, “We want to create unprecedented new models by adding vertical service capabilities to Kakao Brain,” and added, “We will do our best to establish ourselves as one of the major players in the diversified global AI market.”

Co-CEO Kim Il-du said, “Since 2017, Kakao Brain has been conducting advanced AI research and striving to enhance Kakao’s AI capabilities,” and added, “Together with newly appointed CEO Kim Byung-hak, we will consider the direction for Kakao Brain’s development.”

Meanwhile, newly appointed CEO Kim Byung-hak has over 20 years of experience in AI search research. From 2013 to 2017, he served as head of Kakao’s Applied Analytics TF, Search Team, and Recommendation Team, and from February 2017, he led Kakao’s AI division. From December 2019 to May 2021, he continued AI research as Senior Vice President at Kakao Enterprise. He also served as CPO of DeepBio Inc. and non-executive director at Base Investment. Since April, he has led the newly launched AI TF at Kakao to identify and respond to company-wide AI issues.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.