At the Try Everything 2025, a global startup festival held at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) on September 11th and 12th, the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) hosted the 2025 Seoul Unicorn Challenge, featuring promising startups and the largest-ever lineup of investors and enterprises.
Launched as the Korea Challenge in 2020, the Seoul Unicorn Challenge has unearthed startups with innovative technologies every year. Last year, Seoul rebranded the contest, lifted nationality restrictions, and opened its doors to global startups, elevating its stature as a platform where Korean and international companies compete.
For this year’s event, young startup companies within ten years of establishment competed in the preliminary round. As a result, four Korean and three international startups successfully advanced to the final stage, where they faced off on the main stage of Try Everything 2025.
In the final, Bering Lab, which developed an AI translation solution specializing in the legal field, won the Grand Prize. PortLogix, which provides an integrated logistics and control solution for imports and exports, won the second place, while Data Alliance, which showcased a cloud computing platform based on shared idle GPUs, received the Special prize. They were awarded cash prizes of KRW 50 million, KRW 20 million, and KRW 20 million, respectively.
In the competition with a total prize pool of KRW 120 million, Motioncloud, which developed an AI-based damage assessment solution, and Beyond Honeycomb, which showcased an AI cooking robot, both won the third place and received KRW 10 million each. Urideulplus, which provided an eco-friendly cosmetics packaging solution, and Konnect, which offered an integrated living service for foreigners in Korea, won the Encouragement Prize and received KRW 5 million each.
The final round served as a key bridge for Seoul’s startup policies and global growth strategies. For the finalists, the SMG offered various follow-up opportunities, including a dedicated exhibition booth during the festival, IR presentations for international VCs, and 1:1 meet-ups with investors.
The Try Everything is a global startup festival that Seoul has been hosting every year since 2019 in a bid to invigorate its entrepreneurial ecosystem. It is the city’s flagship startup event, bringing together high-potential global startups, major corporations, investors, and accelerators to network and collaborate. In 2024, the festival attracted 2,012 startups and 701 investors, facilitating investment deals totaling KRW 154.2 billion.
This year, the SMG prepared a hub for collaboration and in-depth trend analysis on AI, deep tech, global market entry, and open innovation, under the theme of “Dive Deep, Fly High.” For the keynote sessions, Seoul invited Martin Eberhard, co-founder and former CEO of Tesla, and Zack Kass, former Head of GTM at OpenAI.
The Try Everything significantly ramped up its support to attract investment this year. For instance, it nearly tripled its meet-up booths from 15 to 41 and decided to run a dedicated booth where global investors, corporations, and Korean VCs joined. In addition, an unprecedented number of booths were set up for foreign investment agencies. Twelve institutions from ten countries—North America (the US and Canada), Europe & the Middle East (France, Germany, Dubai), and Asia & Oceania (Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, India)—wholeheartedly supported startups in entering international markets and attracting global investment.
Also appearing at the Try Everything 2025 was PLAVE, Seoul’s virtual boy band that was appointed as the city’s startup ambassador in July. At the event venue, PLAVE’s photo zone and life-size picture were installed along with stamp tour events for the participants. On top of that, engagement-driven content for Millennials and Gen Z was offered, such as an F&B zone run by a chef starred in Culinary Class War, and an on-site promotion team made up of influencers, college students, and foreign students.
