Liner, a South Korean AI agent startup, has closed a Series C round of KRW 50 billion, bringing its cumulative funding to about KRW 94 billion. The round comes roughly one year and ten months after its previous raise, and reportedly pushes the company’s valuation past KRW 300 billion, up from a pre-money valuation of around KRW 250 billion at the round’s outset.
LB Investment led the round. Existing shareholders Atinum Investment and CJ Investment returned with follow-on investments, while the Korea Development Bank, Helios Private Equity, KB Securities, Daishin Securities, and STIC Ventures joined as new investors. Atinum Investment had previously backed Liner’s Series B round in October 2024, and KB Investment has been a shareholder since 2022. What Liner Does Founded in 2012 and led by CEO Kim Jin-woo, Liner is a Korean company that operates an AI search and agent platform combining consumer-facing (B2C) AI search with enterprise (B2B) AI transformation (AX) services.
The company reports more than 14 million global users and has built a reputation for search accuracy, with internal benchmarking citing a 95.3-point accuracy score that the company says outperformed ChatGPT on comparable tests. Liner has expanded beyond general AI search into specialized agents for academic research and investment use cases, and has drawn business interest from international markets including Saudi Arabia. The company was also designated a “pre-unicorn” by Korea’s Ministry of SMEs and Startups in September 2025, qualifying it for up to KRW 20 billion in state-backed guarantees.
Liner said it will concentrate the new capital on research and development to reinforce its core search and agent technology, while also investing in infrastructure expansion, global talent recruitment, and marketing and business development. The company’s stated priority is to first solidify its technological edge in search and agent capabilities before scaling its B2B AX business and broader international expansion.
