Chief Executive Choi Soo-yeon spent two days in Mexico from Sept. 24 with finance chief Kim Hee-cheol and data chief Kim Kwang-hyun, traveling with President Lee Jae Myung's business delegation.
They met Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon and Science Minister Rosaura Ruiz Gutiérrez.
Choi walked the ministers through Naver's public-sector AI work, its sovereign AI strategy of building systems on a country's own data and infrastructure, and the AI factory it is constructing with Nvidia and Brookfield Asset Management.
Ebrard said Mexico was widening its dealings with global AI firms and hoped Naver would contribute to that build-out.
Talks with Ruiz Gutiérrez turned on a national high-performance computing and AI cluster now under way.
Naver is separately weighing a digital twin pilot covering two cities in Querétaro state, which holds more than 70 percent of Mexico's data center infrastructure.
Choi made a similar overture in Paris three weeks earlier, at a Korea-France business roundtable staged during Lee's state visit on Sept. 8. She proposed pairing "France's stable energy base and Naver's experience in the AI ecosystem" to build a factory European companies and startups could draw on, a pitch anchored in the one gigawatt plus AI factory plan the company unveiled with Nvidia and Brookfield.
Kim Kwang-hyun told a Korea-Mexico business forum on Sept. 25 that Korean AI expertise could sharpen competitiveness in a manufacturing economy such as Mexico's, and the executives also met the head of Mexican IT services firm Softtek.
It was the first time Naver executives had visited Mexico to court officials and companies, following Choi's August meetings with Brazilian data center operators Scala and Tecto and Chile's largest carrier, Entel.
AJP Takeaways
- Naver proposed cooperation on public-sector AI transformation and AI infrastructure to Mexico's economy and science ministries on Sept. 24-25, 2026, its first business approach to the Mexican market, while travelling with President Lee Jae Myung's economic delegation.
- The company is discussing a digital twin pilot in two cities in Querétaro state, which accounts for more than 70 percent of Mexico's data center infrastructure, and cooperation on a national high-performance computing and AI cluster.
- Naver Chief Executive Choi Soo-yeon made a comparable AI factory proposal at the Korea-France business roundtable in Paris on Sept. 8, 2026, and met Brazilian and Chilean infrastructure executives in August 2026, marking a widening overseas push.
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