Kakao is restructuring its corporate governance in line with the full-scale arrival of the AI era. Through a spin-off, the newly created Kakao AI will focus entirely on AI services, while the surviving entity, Kakao X, will concentrate on identifying new growth engines. The company plans to accelerate growth by running both entities in parallel.
Kakao held a board meeting Friday and approved the spin-off into Kakao AI and Kakao X. The split ratio, based on net asset book value, was set at 0.36 for Kakao AI and 0.64 for Kakao X. Existing shareholders will receive shares in both companies in proportion to the split ratio.
The spin-off will be finalized Jan. 1 next year, following an extraordinary shareholders' meeting on Dec. 17. Kakao AI is scheduled to relist and Kakao X to complete its name-change listing on Jan. 27 of the same year.
Through the restructuring, Kakao aims to establish a governance structure suited to each business. As its operations expanded, the company found it increasingly difficult to execute business-specific strategies swiftly under a single decision-making framework. The move also extends a roughly two-year effort to shed non-core businesses and sharply reduce the number of affiliates in order to build a growth-focused governance structure.
Under the new arrangement, Kakao AI plans to rapidly expand AI services that users can experience in their daily lives, centering on KakaoTalk and AI. Kakao X will take on the role of identifying new growth drivers — the next KakaoBank, Kakao Pay or Kakao Mobility.
More specifically, Kakao AI will organically connect AI, advertising and commerce around KakaoTalk. The company intends to grow into an "AI core company" that creates differentiated user experiences and revenue models for the agentic AI era. The vision is to evolve KakaoTalk beyond a messenger with 50 million users into an "Agentic AI Interface."
Concrete targets have also been set. By 2030, Kakao AI aims to secure more than 20 million daily active AI users and increase platform time-on-site by more than 50 percent. The company also plans to expand new revenue streams — including AI advertising, agentic commerce and subscriptions — to drive average annual sales growth of around 20 percent, with a target of reaching 6 trillion won ($4.31 billion) in sales by 2030.
Kakao X will serve as an investment holding company. It will steadily grow existing core business units — including KakaoBank, Kakao Pay and Kakao Pay Securities in tech finance; Kakao Entertainment, SM Entertainment and Kakao Piccoma in content; and Kakao Mobility in transportation — while securing future growth engines through new business development and investment in innovative companies.
To that end, Kakao X plans to deploy about 2.3 trillion won raised through the monetization of assets, along with about 4.1 trillion won in investment resources held by subsidiaries. The goal is to build a foundation for sales exceeding 10 trillion won by 2030, driven by core business growth and new investments.
Kim Do-young, chief executive of Kakao Investment and head of the group investment strategy division under Kakao's CA council, has been named the incoming chief executive of Kakao X.
"This split is a decision to shift Kakao to a structure of speed and accountability suited to the AI era," Kakao CEO Jeong Shin-a said. "Kakao AI and Kakao X will each set strategies and capital allocation principles tailored to their respective business characteristics, execute more swiftly, and communicate results transparently with the market."
Kakao founder Kim Beom-su said the company had changed the daily lives of users during the mobile era. "The AI era demands an entirely different level of agility," he said. "By redesigning our growth structure around two engines — Kakao AI and Kakao X — I will do my part to ensure the results flow back to shareholders, users and crew alike."
ko@heraldcorp.com
