[Lead] Naver Cloud is officially entering the defense artificial intelligence (AI) market. By establishing its first dedicated AI organization for the defense sector, the company plans to accelerate the expansion of its AI business within the security and defense industries.

[Main Text] According to the IT industry, Naver Cloud will officially launch a dedicated Defense AX (AI Transformation) Task Force (TF) on June 1. It is the first time in Naver's history that a separate AI organization specializing in defense business has been established. This new organization will be directly overseen by Naver Cloud CEO Kim Yu-won. The establishment of a system where top management directly leads the business suggests that Naver Cloud considers defense AI to be a core future growth driver.

[Promoting Field-Tailored AI Solutions and Commercialization] The Defense AX TF will operate by integrating AI model development, business development, and PR and marketing functions. The goal is to go beyond simple research and development to simultaneously pursue the development and commercialization of AI solutions that can be utilized in actual defense fields. A notable aspect is the frontline deployment of the Field Deployment Engineer (FDE) role. FDEs are deployed to customer sites to analyze requirements and design and build AI systems. This field-centric organizational operation was chosen to develop customized AI services that reflect the unique environments of the military and defense agencies.

[Strengthening 'Sovereign AI' Security Based on Proprietary Infrastructure] Recently, global AI competition has been rapidly expanding beyond the private industry into the defense and security sectors. As generative AI and large language models (LLMs) are utilized for military intelligence analysis, decision-making support, information gathering, and situational awareness, countries are focusing on building AI ecosystems based on their own technologies. Given the nature of the defense sector, where military secrets and core national intelligence are exchanged, reliance on foreign AI models or overseas cloud infrastructure inevitably raises security concerns. Consequently, the need for 'Sovereign AI' has been consistently raised in South Korea. Naver Cloud plans to develop defense-optimized AI services that can be operated in a closed environment, preventing data leakage, based on its own hyper-scale AI models and cloud infrastructure. Furthermore, it plans to apply omni-modal AI technology—which simultaneously analyzes and infers various types of data including text, images, voice, and video—to the defense sector. Through this, services are expected to expand into various areas such as reconnaissance image analysis, voice information processing, operational support systems, and logistics management systems.

[Leap Towards Becoming the 'Korean Palantir'... New Growth Axis Expected for the Defense AI Ecosystem] The market is closely watching whether Naver Cloud can establish a growth model similar to that of the US AI company Palantir Technologies. Palantir is a representative security-specialized AI company that grew by providing data integration and analysis platforms to the US government, Department of Defense, and intelligence agencies. Recently, it has been expanding its influence in the global defense and security market by integrating generative AI technology. Naver Cloud's strategy is also to integrate AI models, cloud infrastructure, and data processing technologies to position itself as a specialized platform provider for the defense sector. The industry evaluates that the launch of this Defense AX TF goes beyond the simple creation of a new organization, serving as a starting point for 'building a Korean defense AI ecosystem.' As global technological competition spreads into a security competition, attention is focused on whether Naver Cloud's moves will lead to a new growth axis for the domestic AI industry.