Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon (최수연) stressed that spreading industrial AI requires a foundation that allows not only large companies but also small and medium-sized firms and suppliers to use AI easily.

Naver said on Sunday that Choi held a special dialogue on industrial AI with Siemens Group CEO Roland Busch at the 19th Asia-Pacific German Business Conference (APK) 2026, held on Oct. 31 at the Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas in Seoul.

“A true AI tipping point in industrial sites will come when even small companies can use AI easily,” Choi said. “The foundation for using AI must expand to SMEs and suppliers so that the results of individual companies can lead to gains in productivity and competitiveness across the entire industry,” she said.

She presented whether problems at actual worksites are solved as the standard for judging the results of AI adoption. As AI takes on more tasks, she said, the role of people in verifying and judging results also becomes important.

“Practical results of AI adoption are not only the completeness of AI-produced outputs but whether it solved problems at the worksite, and how much time and resources saved through AI were used for more valuable tasks,” Choi said.

Choi and Busch also discussed ways to combine Germany’s industrial engineering capabilities with Asia’s semiconductor, AI model and digital platform technologies.

“The value of industrial AI is completed when it is implemented safely and reliably at worksites and spreads across industry,” Busch said. He said there is a need to combine Germany’s engineering expertise with Asia’s technological capabilities.

After the dialogue, the two companies continued talks on technology cooperation. Siemens executives including Busch, Siemens M&A chief Dagmar Munday, Siemens Korea CEO Chung Ha-joong and Siemens Korea Digital Industries head Stephanie Frank visited Naver 1784.

Naver executives including Choi and Naver Labs CEO Seok Sang-ok (석상옥) shared examples of applying digital twin technology at industrial worksites. They also discussed cooperation plans to apply Naver’s digital twin linked with Siemens industrial solutions in global markets.

They also reviewed the possibility of cooperation in next-generation technology areas that Naver is researching and developing, including robot technology and robot foundation models.

APK is an economic event that began in 1986 and is co-hosted by the Korean-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KGCCI) and Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE). Government officials and corporate executives from the Asia-Pacific region take part to discuss industrial cooperation plans.