Kanana Scala 1st Seminar On-site Sketch (opens in new tab)
Kakao’s first Kanana Scholar seminar brought together seven leading AI professors and Kakao researchers to discuss the company’s independent AI strategy. Kakao presented its from-scratch Kanana foundation models, emphasizing data efficiency, Korean-language capability, and multimodal processing. The discussion concluded that Kakao should focus less on generic benchmark scores and more on technology sovereignty, personalized agents, and practical execution in real services. ## Kanana Foundation Models - Kakao is developing its own foundation-model lineup to strengthen competitiveness and reduce dependence on overseas providers. - Kanana reportedly achieved strong performance using 11 trillion training tokens, compared with 23 trillion tokens for a similarly sized global-target model. - Kakao attributed this efficiency to the quality and refinement of its training data. - The company also demonstrated **Kanana-o**, an omni model capable of processing text, images, and audio in real time. - The model handled emotional speech and multi-speaker conversations naturally, receiving praise for its Korean fluency. ## Technology Sovereignty and Customization - Kakao argued that proprietary models protect it from external risks such as changing licensing policies and closed technologies. - Owning the technology enables Kakao to build efficient, customized models optimized for its services. - Participating professors agreed that control over Korean cultural context and local issues is essential for technological sovereignty. - They viewed an independent model as a strategic asset for long-term service stability. ## Digital World Models and Personalized Agents - Kakao aims to understand users’ behavioral context within KakaoTalk and provide highly personalized assistance. - On-device AI could protect private conversations while allowing agents to respond immediately to user needs. - The professors suggested expanding the idea of “physical AI” into a **digital world model** that predicts interactions and causal relationships across a platform. - This direction could create an area of AI differentiation uniquely suited to Kakao’s ecosystem. ## Evaluating Practical Agentic Intelligence - Kakao is prioritizing AI systems that can create multi-step plans, call necessary tools, and complete tasks independently. - It plans to use an internally developed orchestration benchmark to evaluate real-world problem-solving ability. - The professors cited Claude as an example of how users perceive intelligence through successful completion of complex requests, not merely high benchmark scores. - They recommended competing through practical execution in real service environments rather than focusing only on text-generation performance. ## Industry-Academic Cooperation - Kakao plans to explore GPU support for university research labs and undergraduate AI clubs. - Possible support could include credits, project-based resources, and other forms of infrastructure assistance. - The seminar marked the beginning of a broader collaboration aimed at advancing Korea’s AI ecosystem and developing future talent. Kakao’s recommended path is to combine proprietary, efficient models with privacy-preserving personalization and strong agentic execution. Success will depend on how effectively Kanana turns technical depth into useful intelligence that users can experience in everyday services.