'AI That Makes Money'...AI Shifts from Technology Competition to Profit Competition

[Financial News] Global AI companies that had been competing to build the most advanced artificial intelligence models are rapidly shifting their focus this year to profitability. OpenAI has decided to place ads in the free version of its consumer chatbot model, while Anthropic is targeting the enterprise market.
By contrast, South Korea's leading AI companies are still in the stage of expanding AI investment, raising concerns that they may be falling behind the pace of change in the global market.
Calls are growing for the government's AI support policy, which promotes the goal of becoming one of the world's top three AI powers, to focus not only on technology support such as the development of independent foundation models, but also on creating a domestic market for paid AI use among consumers and businesses.
According to a Financial News review on the 11th, global AI companies are accelerating efforts to build profit-driven strategies.
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As competition over AI profitability intensifies, the center of the AI market is quickly shifting toward enterprise services. The global AI market, which had been competing over free chatbots until last year, is now moving toward the business productivity market.
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, said at a recent annual developer conference, "We expected this year's revenue to grow about 10 times from last year, but in reality it could grow as much as 80 times."
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Industry watchers say that expanding enterprise API revenue, including business coding AI service Claude Code, will be a major driver of sales growth. Anthropic has also launched 10 AI agents for the financial sector and is moving to target banks, insurers and asset managers. Global banks such as Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are already among its clients.
OpenAI is also expanding its enterprise sales organization and focusing on industry-specific AI deployment projects. Industry sources estimate that about 40% of OpenAI's monthly revenue comes from enterprise customers.
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Domestic platform companies have yet to see AI businesses drive earnings, and they remain in an investment phase.
Naver posted consolidated revenue of 3.2411 trillion won and operating profit of 541.8 billion won in the first quarter, up 16.3% and 7.2%, respectively, from a year earlier. Kakao reported first-quarter consolidated revenue of 1.9421 trillion won and operating profit of 211.4 billion won, up 11% and 66%, respectively, from the same period last year.
Both companies posted record first-quarter results.
However, market observers say, "Core business growth is still intact, but AI monetization has not yet been confirmed in the numbers," and "the key issue is how much AI infrastructure investment and delivery and commerce costs will further squeeze margins." For that reason, Naver and Kakao are concentrating their AI businesses on B2C areas that can be monetized quickly and directly, showing a direction that contrasts with global AI companies.
Independent foundation model developers, which are competing on technology with government support, have been calling for a push into AI business-to-business markets, but the reality is that they have yet to produce any meaningful results.
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Experts say that in South Korea, the main market for domestic AI companies, businesses still lack confidence in AI spending, which is becoming an obstacle to expanding the enterprise AI market.
At a recent ICON 2026 conference, Megazone Cloud CEO Dong-hoon Yeom said, "Only about 7% of companies are creating real value with AI," adding that "most companies are experiencing an 'AI chasm' and cannot get past PoC, or proof of concept."
In other words, companies understand the need to adopt AI, but they do not feel real business results, so they remain unconvinced about AI investment spending.
As a result, domestic companies are adopting AI only for limited functions such as document summarization, meeting minutes and search assistance. In reality, they are not connecting it to large-scale productivity transformation projects such as building company-wide AI platforms, large-scale AI automation, or industry-specific AI agents in sectors like finance, which leading global companies are pursuing.
One industry expert said, "The early AI race was largely about showing off technology, but after 2026 the market will begin to focus on who is actually making money." The expert added, "For domestic AI companies, the key task will be turning AI itself into a profitable business." He also said, "Our government, which is leading efforts to build an independent AI market centered on the Korean language, should identify cases in which domestic companies or public institutions build AI as an enterprise-wide platform to improve productivity and create a market." He added, "This is a time when market capture matters more than technology competition in the AI industry, so government AI policy also needs to shift."
cafe9@fnnews.com Lee Gu-soon Reporter