Krafton's third-quarter results put a language model it built itself at the front of its AI update. In the results on November 10, the PUBG publisher highlighted Raon-1 mini Preview, released on October 21, and said it will use the model to strengthen game AI including PUBG Ally. On the earnings call, CEO Kim Chang-han gave no date for when the AI spending would pay off and said the company's overall AI strategy would be announced separately, according to Investing.com's transcript.
The plan dates to October 23, 2025. In a Korean-language press release, as machine-translated and reported by GamingOnLinux, Krafton said it would put about KRW 100 billion (roughly $70 million) into a GPU cluster for agentic AI, workflow automation, AI research and in-game AI services, and spend about KRW 30 billion a year from 2026 helping staff use AI tools.
Three weeks later Krafton offered staff voluntary resignation, with payouts of 6 to 36 months' salary depending on tenure, PocketGamer.biz reported, citing Business Korea; Krafton called it support for employees, not a workforce cut. Engadget reported a hiring freeze outside original IP and AI roles. 271 people left the group in January 2026, according to a provisional tally reported by Inven Global, and CFO Bae Dong-geun said the related costs came to about KRW 40 billion.
Other steps followed. NHN Cloud was picked in January to run the cluster, about 1,000 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra GPUs at its Pangyo data center, due to be fully running in July, Korean outlet Financial News reported. In February Krafton named Kangwook Lee, head of KRAFTON AI, to the newly created post of Chief AI Officer. PUBG Ally, an on-device AI teammate built with Nvidia ACE, had a two-week public beta, the Ally Duo Arcade mode, from June 17.
Raon-1 mini's Hugging Face model card lists 28.8 billion parameters, of which about 4.3 billion are active per token, Apache 2.0 weights, and tool calling for agent work. In its Q3 release, Krafton said it plans a larger Raon-1 and a speech model that can listen and talk at the same time.
Why it matters: Krafton has declared itself an AI First company, and it now has its own open model alongside rented GPU capacity. For developers, the useful part is the open weights: a commercially usable model aimed at fast, cheap answers is the kind that game teams test for NPC dialogue and tool agents, as AIGamer's AI NPCs guide explains.
Caveat: Krafton's performance claims for Raon-1 mini come from its own evaluations, and we haven't tested the model. We couldn't find an official confirmation that the GPU cluster went live in July.
Next: Krafton will publish a technical report with the full Raon-1 mini release, Digital Today reported. Kim has promised a separate announcement of the company's AI strategy but hasn't given a date.
