Naver (035420.KS), South Korea's largest internet company, has had its digital twin platform approved as the official platform for local governments by the Saudi Arabian government. The milestone comes three years after Naver won its digital twin contract in 2023. Building on this, Naver plans to expand into artificial intelligence, data centers and robotics, making Saudi Arabia a key base for its global technology exports.
Naver said on the 20th that its cloud-based digital twin platform had been adopted as the "national digital twin standard platform" by Saudi Arabia's Digital Government Authority (DGA).
The move marks a case in which a South Korean information technology (IT) company's capabilities have received official certification from a foreign government agency. Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Municipalities and Housing has sent an official letter recommending that each local government give priority consideration to Naver's platform when pursuing digital twin projects. The Saudi government plans to use it as a national standard platform to shift local administration — including urban planning and operations, asset and infrastructure management, and urban safety — onto a data-driven footing.
Naver had earlier won a contract to build digital twins of major cities from Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Municipalities and Housing in October 2023. In 2025, it recreated more than 6,800 square kilometers — over 11 times the area of Seoul — and more than 920,000 buildings in digital space across three cities, including Mecca, Medina and Jeddah.
With Naver's digital twin technology selected as the Saudi standard platform, the company's Saudi business is expected to gain further momentum. A digital twin is a kind of "urban data infrastructure" that turns city spaces — buildings, roads and facilities — into data. Based on this, AI predicts changes in the city, while the cloud and data centers store and process the information. The precise spatial data of a digital twin also serves as the basis for self-driving robots to move through the actual city, and can be linked to a super app that handles maps, reservations and delivery all at once.
Follow-up projects are also taking shape. Naver is in talks to introduce its robot platform technology — including "Nuri," an outdoor self-driving delivery robot currently being tested in Saudi Arabia — into new cities. The market expects that a robot platform business contract could be signed this year alongside Nuri's launch. If the contract is completed, Naver would achieve the first commercialization linking a virtual city built with a digital twin to robots moving through real space, and would become the first South Korean company to export a robot platform to the Middle East, following Japan.
The super app business is also picking up pace. At a second-quarter earnings conference call on the 7th of this month, Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon said that the digital twin platform of its Saudi joint venture had been adopted as a single country's standard platform, and added, "We are developing it with the goal of launching a map-based super app within the year." Naver plans to first launch a map app that will serve as the foundation for the super app this year, then gradually incorporate service technologies it has accumulated in South Korea, such as reservations, payments and delivery.
Naver is also focusing on its AI and data center businesses. Naver is cooperating with the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) in the AI field and is pursuing cooperation in robotics, autonomous driving, spatial intelligence and smart cities with "New Murabba," a project driven by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF). This year, it also began jointly pursuing a large-scale Saudi data center project with Hanmi Global.
Naver plans to further strengthen cooperation with the Saudi government and local partners on the back of this national-level standard adoption. In particular, it plans to accelerate locally tailored technology upgrades based on the large-scale urban digital twin construction know-how and data it has accumulated. The industry believes that if Naver establishes this business model in Saudi Arabia, it could use it as a springboard to expand its "sovereign AI" business not only to other Middle Eastern countries but also to Europe and Asia.
Chae Seon-ju, Naver's Chief of Strategic Business and chair of Naver Innovation, said, "Building on this national standard adoption, we will apply Team Naver's technological capabilities in digital twin, AI and cloud to urban infrastructure development across Saudi Arabia," adding, "We will solidify our position as a key technology partner helping the Middle East's digital transformation."
