[StartupRecipe] The Rise of Generative AI Services in Korea

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#Weekly Funding Overview

[Mar. 6 ~ Mar. 11]

The total funds raised by Korean startups of this week is KRW 74.7 billion.

Company	Industry	Amount	Round	Investors
Gwanak Analog	Analog SoC	7 billion	Series A	Mirae Asset Venture Investment, Kiwoom Investment, Company K Partners, KDB Capital, Guequity Partners
Tidy-B	AI Branding	-	Seed	Sopoong Ventures
Hudson AI	AI Dubbing	-	Seed	Y & Archer, Daekyung Technology Holdings, Idea Bridge
FutureNuri	Library automation system	-		INO Friends
Intent Corporation	Review marketing	10.5 billion	Series A	SV Investment, Future Play, LG U+, Korea Investment Partners, Crit Ventures, Aekyung Industrial
Ascent Korea	Intent analysis	1.5 billion	Series A	Tinvestment
Business Canvas	Collaboration tool	-	Series A2	IBK Capital, One Asset Management, Angel investor
Teamlearners	AI Content	2 billion	Seed
Sportsbox AI	Golf swing app	-		Neowiz
Paprika Data Lab	Form builder	-	Seed	Korea Investment Accelerator
Quantit	Fintech	30 billion	Series A	Smilegate Holdings
Havan	Blockchain	-		Marblex
Bemyfriends	Fandom platform	4.9 billion	Series A	Cleveland Avenue
THN TECH	Materials	-		Korea Investment Accelerator
Tween nano	NANO HEATER PAD	-		Korea Investment Accelerator
BESTR	Tungsten	-		Korea Investment Accelerator
FrameWorks	Display pannel	-		Korea Investment Accelerator
Woodwardbiocorp	Eco friendly material	-		Korea Investment Accelerator
ABTIS	BIO	-		Korea Venture Investment
Orange football network	Sport platform	-	Pre-Series A	Y&Archer
Afun Interactive	3D Content	7 billion	Series A bridge	Shinhan Asset Management
3secondz	Driving data	-	M&A	Hankook & Company
Protium Science	BIO	12.2 billion	Series A	Korea Investment Partners, KB Investment, KB Investment, IMM Investment, Company K Partners, BNH Investment, Daily Partners
Makeforyou	Factory searching platform	-	Seed	Bon Angels Venture Partners

Major Funding

• 4th CREATIVE PARTY, an animation and visual special effects (VFX) production company that has contributed to major Korean films such as Lady, Monster, and Oldboy, has secured KRW 25 billion in strategic investment from Wizwick Studios. The company intends to collaborate with Wizwick Studios on CG-VFX, as well as co-produce and invest in future projects.
• Intent Corporation, a provider of review marketing solutions including VReview, short-form video review platform Spray, and AMP, which creates marketing materials based on short-form video reviews, has raised KRW 10.5 billion in investment. With a cumulative investment of 16.2 billion won, the company currently boasts 3,800 partners in the U.S., China, and Japan. Intent Corporation plans to use the investment to expand globally and upgrade its technology.
• BeMyFriends, a global fandom platform, has completed a KRW 37.9 billion Series A investment, including 4.9 billion won in funding. With a focus on its global growth and business expansion, the company aims to acquire customers across various industries in the United States.

#Trend Analysis

The Rise of Generative AI Services in Korea

Generative AI services are rapidly gaining popularity in Korea, with big tech companies like Naver and Kakao focused on developing infrastructure and startups are designing specific areas of generative AI to provide services to consumers.

WRTN Technologies is one of the most talked-about startups in the text space. It offers an AI content generation platform that creates business text for corporate ad copy and blog posts. Recently, the company launched WRTN Document, a service that helps draft documents such as business plans and reports.

Other generative AI services are also gaining traction, particularly in the field of virtual human media. Neosapiens operates Typecast, which converts text into audio content based on AI voice generation technology. Meanwhile, Klleon provides a solution Klone service that utilizes AI technology to create digital humans with new images and voices using just one photo.

Lionrocket is another player in this field, with the recent launch of Sporky, an image-generating AI workflow web platform. Sporky is built on top of the company’s Text-to-Image (TTI) technology, which draws pictures from typed text.

Wayne Hills Bryant AI is renowned for its AI-powered video creation service that extracts the meaning of user-entered text and turns it into a video. The platform stands out for its ability to quickly analyze and create videos with vast amounts of content such as financial product manuals, corporate promotional brochures, and trade trend reports, without requiring specialized skills from the user.

POZAlabs is gaining attention in the digital music market with its advanced AI technology that can create customized songs. By systematizing all the data required for composition, from harmonics to sampling, it is possible to produce music that reflects the mood, genre, instrumentation, and degree of harmony.

Many other startups, such as MyRealTrip, are also launching services that incorporate chat GPT. These are services that combine chat GPT with existing services to quickly provide customers with the information they want. Recently, Upstage introduced askup, a service that integrates AI optical character reading (OCR) technology with chatGPT. When a user takes a picture of a document or sends it, ChatGPT reads, understands, and responds to the contents, and 100,000 people subscribed to Askup within six days of its launch on KakaoTalk.

As IT companies like Naver and Kakao announce plans to launch Korean ChatGPT and startups offer their own services, the fever for generative AI in Korea is expected to continue.