The social media gesture and the visit
Siemens CEO Roland Busch on Tuesday posted praise on Instagram for Naver's robotics technology, accompanied by a photo of a robot from the Korean company, according to The Korea Herald. In the post, Busch recounted visiting the headquarters of the South Korean internet group, describing it as the largest in the country, and said he had drawn interesting insights from it. The social media post came after a site visit on October 31 to Naver's second site, the Naver 1784 complex in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, where autonomous robots and digital systems are integrated into the building's daily management.
The sequence of events is straightforward: first the visit, then the public comment. This order suggests that the post is not an isolated episode but the visible tail end of a meeting that took place at the operational level, with Siemens executives present alongside Busch during the tour of the facility.
What the two companies discussed
According to Naver's account, during the visit executives from the two companies explored possible forms of cooperation in digital twin technology, namely the creation of virtual representations of physical systems. The reasoning at the center of the discussion concerns combining Naver's technology with Siemens' industrial solutions, with the aim of addressing global markets. The two sides also discussed possible collaboration in robotics and in the foundation models for robots under development at Naver.
Naver Labs CEO Seok Sang-ok presented the company's robotics technologies and showed their use within the building, which serves as a testbed for autonomous delivery robots and other digital systems. The meeting with Busch had begun at another venue: the two CEOs, Busch and Choi Soo-yeon, had discussed industrial artificial intelligence at the 19th Asia-Pacific Conference of German Business (APK 2026) in Seoul.
Stated positions and open questions
At the conference, Choi argued for the need to extend AI's benefits beyond large companies to smaller businesses and suppliers. Busch emphasized the need for safe and reliable use of AI in industrial environments. These are statements of principle that outline converging outlooks but not a concrete plan.
The point to verify is precisely this: the material does not report any signed agreement, any financial value, any timetable, or the precise geographic scope of any possible initiatives. The collaborations remain potential and under discussion, not announced. The praise on social media should therefore be read as a signal of rapprochement between the two groups, not as confirmation of an operational agreement.
It also remains to be clarified what role Naver's foundation models for robots would play in a possible partnership with Siemens, and whether the testbed represented by Naver 1784 could become a case study for the German group's industrial solutions.
