OpenClo-Based AI Agents Spread as Government Moves to Build Ecosystem

*Editor's Note: 'AI PRISM' (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an 'AI-based customized news recommendation and summarization service' developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six tailored news stories for each reader type.

1. Torder, Overtaken by KT, Cuts 100 Employees and Liquidates Subsidiaries

- Key Summary: Torder, Korea's No. 1 table-ordering company, reduced its workforce from approximately 300 to the low 200s and began liquidating overseas and new business subsidiaries amid accumulated losses and declining revenue. Revenue fell more than 20% year-on-year to the low 40 billion won range last year, with operating losses exceeding 10 billion won and net losses surpassing 20 billion won. KT's HiOrder, leveraging bundled telecom discounts, secured 200,000 installed units (25–30% market share) within three years of launch and is closing in fast, while Torder has stagnated at around 300,000 units. With both fundraising and management buyout attempts having failed, concerns over entering court receivership have emerged, prompting drastic cost cuts.

2. China's Unmanned Delivery Vehicles Surge 9-Fold in One Year — "Past Mass Production Tipping Point, Targeting Profitability This Year"

- Key Summary: Neolix, China's No. 1 unmanned delivery vehicle maker, surpassed 100 million cumulative kilometers driven and set a target of 50,000 units produced by year-end. Through in-house development of core components, the company lowered hardware manufacturing costs by 40–50% compared to competitors and achieved a 90% reduction in new market entry costs with a mapless driving solution that operates without high-definition maps. Neolix raised $600 million in Series D funding last November, reaching unicorn status, and recorded revenue of 1 billion yuan (approximately 220 billion won). Meanwhile, the company is diversifying into the urban delivery market (valued at 3 trillion yuan) and pursuing profitability this year along with expansion to 50 cities nationwide and overseas markets.

3. 'Agentic AI' Is Coming — Will Naver Expand with 'OpenClo Agents'?

- Key Summary: Naver Cloud, a subsidiary of Naver, is reviewing AI agent development using open-source AI agent platform 'OpenClo.' OpenClo is a technology installed on users' PCs or cloud environments that autonomously performs tasks requiring external tools, such as sending emails. Overseas, Baidu, Tencent and Microsoft have already begun commercialization. However, security vulnerabilities — including unauthorized task execution and sensitive data leaks — have been flagged as challenges, prompting Nvidia and Baidu to release their own security-enhanced versions. The government has also launched the 'Agentic AI Alliance,' a public-private consultative body for developing the AI agent ecosystem, and plans to discuss technology standards and security safeguards.

4. Nobel Laureate Prof. Baker: "AI Creates Proteins That Don't Exist in Nature — Pinpoint Removal of Dementia and Cancer Cells Now Possible"

- Key Summary: David Baker, a professor at the University of Washington and 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate, forecast the broad industrial adoption of generative AI-based protein design technology at a Yonsei University forum. Baker said he uses the AI model 'RF Diffusion' to design proteins that selectively bind only to cancer cells or viruses, and that developing nanomachines capable of removing only tau proteins — the causative substance of Alzheimer's disease — is also possible. The technology is seen as having significant potential to spread beyond medicine into chemical processes, plastic degradation and photosynthesis efficiency improvements. However, Baker noted that "the investment ecosystem is well established in the medical field, but investment is lacking in areas such as the chemical industry," emphasizing the need for investment to expand the technology's versatility.

5. Kakao Pay (377300.KS) Joins Linux Foundation's 'AI Payment' Initiative

- Key Summary: Kakao Pay, a subsidiary of Kakao (035720.KS), became the first Korean payment company to join as a founding member of the x402 Foundation, a next-generation web payment protocol launched by the Linux Foundation. x402 is a protocol led by Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, and is attracting attention as core infrastructure enabling AI agents to automatically execute stablecoin payments. Global companies including Coinbase, Circle, Google, AWS, Microsoft, Visa, Mastercard and Stripe have joined, with Kakao Pay as the only founding member from Korea. Kakao Pay has formed a task force with Kakao and KakaoBank (323410.KS) to prepare for the digital asset ecosystem.

6. Toss Place Issues First Corporate Bond — Accelerating Toss IPO Preparations

- Key Summary: Toss Place, the payment terminal subsidiary of Viva Republica, issued its first-ever corporate bond worth 100 billion won ($74 million). The bond carries a coupon rate of 5.30% with a two-year maturity, managed by Cape Investment & Securities (064820.KS). While Toss Bank (net profit of 96.8 billion won) and Toss Securities (net profit of 340.1 billion won) are driving performance, Toss Place posted a net loss of 80.1 billion won with total equity of negative 40.8 billion won, placing it in capital impairment. As Viva Republica pursues an IPO within the year, concerns have emerged that Toss Place's weak performance could weigh on the parent company's valuation.