Krafton (259960) announced on the 23rd that it has created a new Chief AI Officer (CAIO) position and appointed Kang-Wook Lee, head of Krafton's AI Division, to the role. The CAIO will serve as the top executive overseeing AI research and development and mid-to-long-term technology strategy.
Krafton said the appointment was based on Lee's expertise in AI, his research achievements accumulated while balancing AI technology research and project operations, as well as his leadership and execution experience.
Lee earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from UC Berkeley in 2016 and has served as a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 2019. He has conducted research across AI disciplines including deep learning and machine learning. Since 2022, he has concurrently served as head of Krafton's AI Division, bridging academia and industry. He has focused on reorganizing Krafton's AI research framework and advancing its technical capabilities, leading R&D in core AI fields including machine learning (ML), language models (LM), natural language processing (NLP), reinforcement learning (RL), and multimodal models. His research achievements have gained international recognition, with 57 Krafton papers accepted at world-renowned AI conferences including NeurIPS, ICML, and ICLR.
Lee has also successfully led major projects. In 2025, he oversaw a collaboration project with NVIDIA and unveiled CPC (Co-Playable Character), enabling real-time interaction between users and AI, presenting new possibilities for expanding user experience. Since last year, he has participated in Krafton's proprietary AI foundation model project, leading the company's key technology development. Recently, he resigned from his tenured professorship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to fully dedicate himself to Krafton's AI R&D and mid-to-long-term technology strategy. He plans to focus on advancing game AI R&D while expanding into mid-to-long-term technologies including physical AI.
Through this appointment, Krafton plans to further advance its game AI R&D framework and strengthen its mid-to-long-term business strategy based on foundational technologies. The company will also enhance AI as a tool to expand developer creativity and innovate user experience, delivering evolved gaming experiences. Under this direction, AI strategy will be driven by three pillars: innovating user experience, improving production and operational efficiency, and securing mid-to-long-term new growth engines.
Additionally, Krafton will continue physical AI and robotics research through a separate entity. The company is preparing a structure with a parent company in the United States and a subsidiary in Korea. The entity will be named "Ludo Robotics," with CAIO Lee leading the Korean subsidiary. Krafton believes that the large-scale interaction data and virtual world operation experience accumulated through game development and operations can serve as meaningful competitive advantages in physical AI and robotics research. The company is particularly focused on the mid-to-long-term research potential of validating in virtual environments areas that are difficult to test repeatedly in real-world settings, centering on the software (SW) responsible for robot intelligence.
"Krafton views AI not as technology that replaces humans and creativity, but as a tool that expands imagination and creativity," said Kang-Wook Lee, CAIO of Krafton. "We will explore long-term expansion possibilities based on AI technology and data, centered on our core gaming business."