Kakao Mobility, LG Innotek team on self-driving tech

South Korea’s Kakao Mobility signed a memorandum of understanding with LG Innotek on May 20 to develop autonomous driving solutions.

The partnership combines Kakao’s vehicle data collection network with LG’s sensing hardware.

LG Innotek will work on a sensing system that uses cameras, radar, and lidar.

Kakao said it will use the setup to gather real-world driving data for its AI data pipeline and end-to-end driving models.

Kakao said the deal extends its KM Autonomous Driving Alliance into hardware.

The company has worked with several South Korean autonomous driving companies since 2021.

🔗 Source: Kakao Mobility

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Kakao Mobility wants more than driving data. It plans to bring the full stack of self-driving technology inside the company and build Level 4 autonomous driving systems on its own 1, 2.
In April 2026, Kakao Mobility set out a plan to build one safety platform and train better machine learning models with road data, simulation, and validation 2.
For LG Innotek, the agreement supports its plan to grow mobility sensing solutions, vehicle sensing systems used in cars, to 2 trillion won (US$1.5 billion) in revenue by 2030 1.
Kakao Mobility’s driving data should help LG Innotek sharpen the sensing modules used in autonomous driving, including cameras, radar, and lidar 1.

The agreement fits a wider move toward partnerships between hardware makers and software companies.
LG Innotek is taking two paths. One partnership with Kakao Mobility centers on road data. Another with Applied Intuition, a US autonomous vehicle software company, covers sensor integration and validation through Applied Intuition’s autonomous driving software platform and simulation environment 1, 3.
Both companies describe the work as a move into physical AI, AI systems that run machines in the real world such as robots and drones 1.
The hardware tie-up also supports Kakao Mobility’s plan to build an open autonomous driving ecosystem in South Korea and lift local competitiveness as global competition grows 2.