As Kakao刷新 its highest-ever quarterly performance, the company plans to officially introduce the 'Agent AI' experience within KakaoTalk starting in the second half of this year and begin monetizing it.

Kakao announced that it achieved consolidated revenue of KRW 2.0985 trillion and operating profit of KRW 277 billion in the second quarter of 2026. These figures represent year-over-year growth of 9% and 36%, respectively, marking the highest quarterly performance in the company's history. This strong performance was primarily driven by robust growth in the KakaoTalk advertising and commerce sectors, along with improved profitability in platform businesses such as Mobility and Pay. The operating profit margin also reached the 13% range, up approximately 3 percentage points from the same period last year.

To defend its performance and discover future growth drivers, Kakao plans to sequentially introduce the Agent AI experience within KakaoTalk starting in the second half of the year. The first-phase goal is to increase the monthly active users (MAU) of its AI services to over 10 million by the end of the year, establishing a solid user base. The subsequent strategy is to gradually expand the business using various revenue models, including transactions, subscriptions, and advertising.

Specifically, following agent commerce transaction fees and an AI subscription model, the company aims to introduce 'AI advertising' that is differentiated from existing KakaoTalk ads. This new approach deeply analyzes the user's conversational context, behavior, and intent to recommend products or services. Through this, Kakao has set a goal to raise the share of AI-related revenue within TalkBiz to double digits by 2028.

The first attempt to connect AI from a simple conversational service to actual transactions begins with a collaboration with Coupang Eats. With Coupang Eats selected as an Agent AI partner, an on-device AI model will understand the conversational context to catch delivery and food ordering intentions. This will allow users to complete orders and payments all at once within a KakaoTalk chatroom, and the two companies plan to implement the actual service in the near future.

During the earnings conference call on the 6th, Kakao CEO Chung Shin-a stated, "Considering the current direction and execution speed of Kakao's AI strategy, the foundation for the popularization of AI will be laid by the end of this year, enabling full-scale monetization starting next year." She added, "Not only transaction fees from agent commerce and subscription revenue from AI services, but also entirely new AI advertising revenue that Kakao has not had before will begin to be generated in earnest."

Regarding the collaboration with Coupang Eats, she emphasized, "We have been prioritizing collaborations with top-tier industry players in areas with high daily usage frequency and where AI agent recommendations can lead to actual transactions." She described it as "the first step in creating a new usage habit where AI connects the user's intentions to actual actions and resolves repetitive daily behaviors through AI."

Kakao projects that by operating multiple initiatives in parallel during the second half of the year, the MAU of AI services within KakaoTalk will exceed 10 million by year-end. In the mid-to-long term, the company has also identified the discovery of new AI-based advertising revenue models and entering the search advertising market as core tasks.

Finally, CEO Chung expressed her ambition, stating, "For Kakao, AI is not a one-off project but a core element for sustainable growth. We will design the future with a strong focus on safety, and based on various experiments and investments, we will sequentially introduce innovative AI services that will lead to an enhancement in corporate value."