Former Kakao Entertainment co-CEO Jinsoo Lee has joined Kakao's Future Initiative Center, the group’s future control tower, and will be in charge of designing the group’s mid- to long-term strategy. With founder Bumsoo Kim returning to an organisation he leads as center head, the group is expected to step up efforts to find new businesses and secure growth drivers at group level.

Industry sources said on Jan. 5 that Lee began coming to work that day as head of future strategy at the Future Initiative Center.

The Future Initiative Center is a key strategic organisation that discovers future growth engines for the Kakao group and coordinates investment priorities. Kakao has set up a new future strategy unit within the center and put Lee in charge of leading it. He will support Kim and will play a role in detailing future business strategy for the AI era.

The appointment is directly tied to Kakao's “growth shift” stance that it declared starting this year. Earlier, Jungshin Ahn, chair of the CA Council body, presented “people-centred AI” and a “global fandom OS” as the core pillars that will drive Kakao's growth in 2026. Lee’s arrival is seen as a move to put that vision into action.

Lee’s experience in content intellectual property (IP) business is expected to play a central role in building Kakao’s “global fandom OS.” In 2010, he founded Podotree with founder Kim, a predecessor of KakaoPage, and established the “wait for free” model, opening up the paid market in the webtoon and web novel industry. He later led global expansion as co-CEO of Kakao Entertainment, including the acquisitions of North American platforms Tapas and Radish, and drove platform growth to an annual transaction value of 1 trillion won.

The industry expects Lee to draw up a blueprint for a new fandom business combined with AI, based on his experience expanding story IP from simple content into a large business ecosystem. Kakao plans to use Lee’s arrival to accelerate the discovery of agentic AI-based services across the group and expand global business using Web3.

Lee, born in 1973, worked at P&G Korea and IBM before serving as head of NHN’s global business planning group. After stepping down as CEO in January 2024, he has served as chair of the Kakao Creative Foundation and has focused on supporting the creative ecosystem.