Kakao (035720.KS) has joined hands with Coupang Eats as the first step in expanding its artificial intelligence (AI) agent ecosystem. By broadening its points of contact with specialized service platforms such as food delivery, the company aims to ultimately build a "vertical AI infrastructure" that handles all consumption experiences within KakaoTalk.
"The first vertical field to be integrated with Kakao's agentic AI is food delivery," Kakao CEO Chung Shin-a said during a conference call on the 6th to announce second-quarter earnings for this year. "We are entering a partnership with Coupang Eats."
Through this integration, users will be able to handle the entire process — from food recommendations to ordering and payment — at once through the AI agent within a KakaoTalk chatroom. Kakao's on-device AI model identifies a user's intent based on conversation context and accumulated user preferences, then connects it to actual actions and transactions.
"The two companies are currently discussing details so that the in-chat AI agent experience can smoothly lead to actual transactions, and we plan to launch the actual service soon," Chung said.
Starting with the Coupang Eats collaboration, Kakao plans to expand its vertical areas in the future by linking up with domestic and overseas partners. The blueprint is to create a foundation on which all areas of daily life — commerce, reservations, travel and payments — can be handled within KakaoTalk.
Kakao will also actively expand the ecosystem of "Play MCP," its open platform based on the Model Context Protocol (MCP). More than 3,400 MCP tools are currently operating on Play MCP, generating more than 100,000 calls per day.
"Competitiveness in the era of agentic AI lies beyond developing an excellent model — in understanding a user's context and intent and connecting it to actual action," Chung said. "Based on the everyday touchpoint of KakaoTalk and our technology and service ecosystem, Kakao will hasten the era in which every citizen uses their own AI agent."
