Lee Jin-soo, former co-chairman of Kakao Entertainment, will return to Kakao in the new year to explore Kakao’s future growth strategy. He joined the Kakao Future Initiative Center, which is in charge of Kakao’s founder Kim Bum-soo.
On the 5th, Kakao said, “Former CEO Lee joined Kakao,” and added, “In the era of artificial intelligence (AI), it will contribute to specifying Kakao Group’s future business strategy and discovering and fostering mid- to long-term growth engines.”
The Future Initiative Center is in charge of targeting the global market and discovering future food for all of the group’s affiliates, including Kakao. It is mainly seeking new business plans or mid- to long-term strategies.
Meanwhile, Kakao declares 2026 as the year of “directional growth” and plans to increase the group’s value by using AI and global fandom as new growth engines.
To this end, Kakao plans to maximize Kakao’s unique strengths, which have understood the daily life and the context of 50 million users in line with “people-centered AI.” In a recent New Year’s address, Kakao CEO Jung Shin-ah emphasized, “AI will evolve into an Agentic AI that first understands user intentions and situations and connects next actions beyond simply performing commands.”
It also plans to build a global fandom ecosystem where fans from all over the world communicate and create value by combining “Full-stack assets” such as Super Intellectual Property (IP), platforms, and online and offline interfaces owned by Kakao Group.
In this regard, former CEO Lee plays a big role. Former CEO Lee has been developing a story IP business centered on webtoons and web novels since his days as Podotree, the predecessor of Kakao Page.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.mk.co.kr ’












