At Tech-Verse 2025, the annual tech conference, LY Corporation announced that, in response to the growing demand for artificial intelligence applications and data privacy, security, and sovereignty governance, it will launch a next-generation privacy cloud platform called "Flava." This platform will integrate the existing LINE and Yahoo Japan web services, strengthen the combined data and machine learning platforms, and unify them into a single user experience. LY Corporation also emphasized the integration of AI proxy services into LINE and Yahoo Japan services, enhancing the user experience through artificial intelligence.
Through the new generation privacy cloud platform called "Flava", the existing data structures of LINE and Yahoo Japan are integrated.
Since the announcement in late September 2023 that LINE, Yahoo Japan, and their parent company, Z Holdings, would merge to form LY Corporation, it has become necessary to integrate user demographic data across markets including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Thailand. Therefore, through a project codenamed "CatalystOnePlatform," the company aims to make related expenses more efficient, add more application features, and improve security.
Under the project codenamed "CatalystOnePlatform," LY Corporation is improving its public cloud, security, development, and other operational structures through numerous sub-projects. Furthermore, through a next-generation privacy-focused cloud platform called "Flava," it is integrating the existing data structures of LINE and Yahoo Japan, achieving performance improvements of up to 20% while also improving the efficiency of CPU, memory, and storage space usage on cloud servers.
The data security structure is also layered, where content that does not specifically involve sensitive information will be clearly separated from content containing sensitive information such as user names and personal accounts. Even highly sensitive information such as bank credit cards and user passwords will be isolated and protected separately to avoid privacy leaks when data is mixed.
As for "Flava", research and development has begun in the first quarter of this year, and the conversion is expected to begin in the third quarter of this year. It is expected that all research and development and conversion work will be completed in the fourth quarter of this year, and the integration of existing and newly added user data will begin in the first quarter of 2026, with the goal of completing all data integration before 2030.
The server system database and other resources of LINE and Yahoo Japan will be integrated
In terms of data integration, LY Corporation stated that it will fully integrate the server system databases, CPU computing resources, and data content of LINE and Yahoo Japan. This will bring the total number of LINE Yahoo databases to over 20, the number of CPU cores to 19, and the data size to over 750 Petabytes.
In addition, the integrated LINE Yahoo server system will be enhanced with artificial intelligence-driven capabilities to support larger data volumes and access traffic, while also enabling more seamless data integration, thereby reducing operating expenses. It will also enable the creation of new vertically integrated application services by combining diverse data content.
LY Corporation expects that by increasing the overall utilization of data, it will be able to further drive the growth of related businesses.
However, since LINE Taiwan and other markets such as Thailand and South Korea operate independently, and some services such as LINE Pay involve personal sensitive information and financial transactions, the data should still be stored separately in each region and has not been further integrated with Yahoo Japan like the Japanese market.
The author has contacted LINE Taiwan to respond to the relevant questions, and will add any updates here later.
Updated:LINE Taiwan subsequently explained that all LINE service data (including those in Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, and other markets) will be stored in Japan and maintained in accordance with the ISO27001 internationally recognized information security management system standard. It will also be managed under a strict authority control mechanism, ensuring that only staff with work needs, who have passed review, and who have been authorized, will be able to access the required data.
However, usage data for services like LINE Pay must be stored within the region of each market due to domestic regulations. For example, in the Taiwan market, relevant financial transaction data must be stored locally in response to the requirements of the Financial Supervisory Commission, and other markets will also operate in accordance with local regulations.
Create greater development momentum with AI agent services and implement them in various services of LINE and Yahoo Japan
Furthermore, driven by the growing application of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, LY Corporation anticipates that AI agent services will generate even greater growth momentum. Consequently, since the start of fiscal year 2025, LY Corporation has invested in at least 44 AI-enhanced application service improvements and at least 35 AI-enhanced productivity enhancements. LY Corporation has also begun applying AI agent services to products under LINE and Yahoo Japan.
For example, in the Yahoo Japan app, you can now see an AI-driven assistant service in the interface to help answer various questions from users. It uses the content in the Yahoo Japan database as the basis for answers and uses generative AI to generate natural voice replies for interaction.
As for LINE, an artificial intelligence service called "LINE AI" has also been added to suggest appropriate replies or stickers in chat conversations. It also includes AI virtual characters driven by generative artificial intelligence, allowing users to interact in natural spoken language.
Yahoo Japan's shopping service also integrates artificial intelligence application functions, including recommending suitable discounts, product comparisons, specification descriptions, or analyzing product reviews, allowing users to find suitable products in an easier way.
LY Corporation's AI agent service will now be applied with a unique identifier across Yahoo Japan's finance, localized recommendations, news content, shopping, and various LINE services. The company also announced plans to expand its embrace of generative AI applications to enhance customer service, instant translation, and content search and matching capabilities through SeekAI technology. Currently, 490 applications and services have integrated SeekAI technology.
Use artificial intelligence to improve development and management efficiency, and ensure service safety in a responsible manner.
On the other hand, LY Corporation also stated that it will apply AI agent services to internal management applications and assist corporate IT personnel in managing matters, including the integration of OpenAI's ChatGPT enterprise version service, Google Workspace and Gemini.
As for the development platform, LY Corporation will use a development platform called Ark Developer to assist with artificial intelligence from interface design to coding and subsequent testing processes. This includes helping with code writing, error checking, document compilation, automated testing, and related coding quality verification. The process will also integrate large-scale natural language models from OpenAI, Google, or Microsoft. At the same time, data will be integrated through confluence channels such as GitHub or independent reports to improve the output performance of large-scale natural language models using RAG (Retrieval Augmentation Generation), thereby increasing overall development productivity by 10-15%.
In addition, LY Corporation will continue to expand the development of generative artificial intelligence integrated applications, and plans to transform all service content into AI agent-oriented services to improve production efficiency. It also expects to promote the use of artificial intelligence through agent service memory, MCP model context stringing protocol, and large-scale natural language operations, and also advocates ensuring the safe use of artificial intelligence operations in a responsible manner.
