[StartupRecipe] South Korea’s Startup Investment Landscape 2025: 10 Key Findings

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#Weekly Funding Overview

#FUNDING

#TREND ANALYSIS

South Korea’s Startup Investment Landscape 2025: 10 Key Findings

Startup Recipe has released the Startup Recipe Investment Report 2025, a comprehensive analysis of South Korea’s startup investment ecosystem for the year 2025. The report provides detailed insights into investment trends across the first and second halves of the year, examines 15 industry sectors, and analyzes investment patterns by scale, investor type, region, and gender. The full report is available for free download.

10 KEY FINDINGS

1. Stable Annual Investment with V-Shaped Recovery: Total annual investment reached 5.9134 trillion won, similar to the previous year, but demonstrated a V-shaped recovery in the second half with selective capital concentration in AI and deep tech sectors.
2. First Half Downturn: Investment in the first half decreased 24% year-over-year, mega-deals over 100 billion won disappeared, and amid valuation normalization, funding was maintained only for bio-healthcare and verified mid-to-late stage companies.
3. Strong Second Half Rebound: Investment sentiment surged from July onward, bringing 3.7947 trillion won in the second half, driven by large deals in AI semiconductors, bio, and content sectors, along with the emergence of new unicorns FuriosaAI and Galaxy Corporation.
4. Bio-Healthcare Leads Investment: Bio-healthcare ranked first in total investment, while other sectors including software, consumer tech, manufacturing, fintech, and climate tech saw capital concentrated only in areas with proven performance and profitability.
5. Growth in Early and Late Stages, Stagnation in Middle: Both early-stage and growth-stage investments increased, showing notable second-half recovery, but the Series A-B middle segment remained stagnant.
6. Deep Tech Unicorn Emergence: New unicorns emerged in deep tech sectors with AI semiconductor company FuriosaAI and AI entertainment tech company Galaxy Corporation, marking a shift from platform-centered to deep tech-centered unicorn structure.
7. High Concentration Among Top Companies: The top 20 companies captured 30% of total investment, with capital concentration in AI semiconductors, deep tech software, bio, and climate tech sectors.
8. Private Sector Dominance: Private investment share reached 83.4%, transitioning from policy finance-centered to private sector-centered structure, with increased participation from large corporations, big tech companies, and global VCs.
9. Strategic M&A and IPO Activity: The market saw select large strategic M&As including Naver Financial’s acquisition of Dunamu, alongside robust IPO activity centered on AI and beauty sectors.
10. Metropolitan Concentration and Gender Gap: Companies raising over 10 billion won were 83.9% concentrated in the Seoul-Gyeonggi metropolitan area, with growing trends of startups headquartered in non-metropolitan areas and overseas, while female-founded companies received only 2.3% of investment, mostly at seed and pre-Series A stages.

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