South Korea is experiencing a transformative AI boom, positioning itself as a global leader in artificial intelligence innovation. Driven by its world-class expertise in semiconductor technology—essential for AI systems—South Korea has become a pivotal hub for AI-related advancements.
The country’s dominance in memory chips, particularly those used in AI data storage and processing, has attracted significant international attention. Global companies such as NVIDIA are relying on South Korean firms like SK Hynix and Samsung for cutting-edge high-bandwidth memory (HBM) solutions.
The South Korean government is heavily investing in AI and semiconductor infrastructure, exemplified by initiatives like the US$471.4 billion Yongin Semiconductor Cluster. This has led to a surge in investor confidence and boosted the global profile of local startups. Companies such as Naver, LG, and Kakao are at the forefront of AI development, from generative AI chatbots to advanced cloud infrastructure.
Moreover, collaborations with global tech leaders, including OpenAI, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services, have further accelerated South Korea’s AI capabilities. These partnerships underscore the country’s growing importance as a strategic player in the AI landscape.
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South Korea’s vibrant AI ecosystem, bolstered by government support and robust international collaborations, has made it a hotspot for innovation. It nurtures startups that are shaping the future of artificial intelligence globally.
Below is the list of South Korea’s top AI startups:
Rebellions
Rebellions manufactures AI accelerators. It develops AI processors using silicon-based architecture and deep learning algorithms and offers custom processors with optimised algorithms. These processors have applications in financial trading, energy systems, cloud servers, and autonomous vehicles.
Founding year: 2020
Total funding raised: US$211 million
Investors: Aramco, Wa’ed Ventures, KT, Korean Development Bank, Korelya Capital, KT Cloud, Pavilion Capital Partners, Shinhan Venture Investment, DG Daiwa Ventures, Somers Investment Partners, Korea Development Bank Europe, Mirae Asset, IMM Investment, KB Investment, Kakao Ventures, Mirae Asset Capital Markets, STH, GU Equity Partners, KT Investment, Shinhan Capital, Dunamu & Partners, and ReVentures.
DeepX
DeepX designs and manufactures neural network processing units for edge applications. The startup also develops an AI-powered bot that keeps crypto socials free from scammers and spammers.
Founding year: 2018
Total funding raised: US$103 million
Investors: SkyLake, BNW Investment, Time Polio Asset Management, Aju IB Investment, Korea Development Bank Europe, ALUMNI-PARTNERS, Pathfinder H, Shinhan Bank, Capstone Partners, Shinhan Financial Group, DS, InterValue Partners, Magna, and Kingo.
Selectstar
Selectstar provides a platform for AI training solutions. It allows users to collect images, voices, videos, and texts from different sources and label and validate the raw data. Selectstar’s features are object segmentation, line segmentation, classification, transcription, editing, comparison, and other tools for labelling solutions.
Founding year: 2019
Total funding raised: US$67 million
Investors: Kakao Ventures, Company K Partners, CJ Investment, Now IB Capital, and Kolon Investments.
Wrtn Technologies
Wrtn develops an AI and NLP-based writing assistant to enhance creativity and productivity.
Founding year: 2021
Total funding raised: US$32 million
Investors: SkyLake, BRV Capital Management, Z Venture Capital, Capstone Partners, Industrial Bank of Korea, KB Securities, KEB Hana Bank, WOORI Venture Partners, Hana Financial Investment, KDB Industrial Bank, Sui Generis Partners, and Krew Capital.
Moreh
Moreh develops a full AI software stack. The platform enables users to optimise the life cycle of a hyper-scale AI. Moreh also provides AI infrastructure software designed for parallelisation and cluster scalability. Its software stack includes AI infrastructure and application services like chips.
Founding year: 2020
Total funding raised: US$30 million
Investors: KT, AMD, Smile Gate Investment, and Forest Partners.
Skelter Labs
Skelter Labs develops AI-based language processing technologies for enterprises. Its offerings include a conversational AI engine that allows users to build AI chatbots and provides management tools for both sequential and non-sequential conversation flows. It also provides speech recognition and synthesis technology that can be used to recognise or synthesise voices from various speakers with features like emotion, tonality, context recognition, and visual processing.
Founding year: 2015
Total funding raised: US$23.5 million
Investors: KBD Capital, Stonebridge Capital, Kakao Ventures, Korea Investment Holdings, Korea Development Bank Europe, BNK, ATP, Golden Gate Ventures, Kakao Brain, Stonebridge Ventures, LOTTE, Colopl Next, Shinhan Futures Lab, The Wells Investment, Access Ventures, and BNK Venture Capital.
Mobilint
Mobilint provides sensor fusion and deep learning systems on a chip technology, which provides accelerated artificial intelligence solutions. Its NPU solutions are optimised for AI tasks.
Founding year: 2019
Total funding raised: US$15.3 million
Investors: Kyobo Securities, Union Investment Partners, Daesung Startup Investment, Korean Development Bank, L&S Venture Capital, and FuturePlay.
AIMMO
It provides an AI model labelling and training platform. AIMMO enables users to build, train, label, analyse, and manage AI models for multiple applications. Its features include labeller analytic tools, real-time communication functions, a custom workflow designer, auto-labeling tools, a thumbnail viewer, and LiDAR data tools. The firm uses computer vision, NLP, and cloud technologies. It caters to the automotive, healthcare, and robotic industries.
Founding year: 2016
Total funding raised: US$12 million
Investors: DS, Industrial Bank of Korea, Hanwha Investment & Securities, Toss, Korea Asset Investment Securities, VentureField, and S&S Investment
Channel Talk
It provides AI- and SaaS-based customer relationship management solutions for online retailers. The platform supports retailers in capturing customers and tracking the customer identity, duration of visits, and drops in messages, offering them product recommendations, deals, and more.
Founding year: 2014
Total funding raised: US$10 million
Investors: Laguna Investment, KB Investment, Atinum Investment, BonAngels Venture Partners, Colopl Next, KDDI Open Innovation Fund, Global Brain, Korea Investment Holdings, Aju IB Investment, Stonebridge Capital, Fast Track Asia, SparkLabs, Amorepacific Ventures, Kolon Investments, IMM Investment, Fast Investment, and Four Asian Tigers.
Odd Concepts
Odd Concepts provides computer vision and deep learning-based image recognition solutions for enterprises. It uses its proprietary image recognition platform to develop products and provide cloud-based API solutions for clients.
Founding year: 2018
Total funding raised: US$10 million
Investors: KB Securities, HB Investment, Kiwoom Investment, SBI Investment Korea, Korean Development Bank, Stonebridge Capital, Colopl Next, and KB Investment.
Lablup
It is a cloud-based AI model development and deployment. Lablup develops algorithms for computing-based research using AI and cloud computing technologies. The AI firm also provides a management platform for training deep learning models and computational research, and machine learning-based chatbot, and a web UI application. The SDKs are compatible with optimised environments for machine-learning toolkits such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, and Caffe. It leverages machine learning to create apps for multiple applications such as Visual Studio Code and Atom Editor.
Founding year: 2015
Total funding raised: US$9.6 million
Investors: K2 Investment Partners, LB Investment, Industrial Bank of Korea, Daesung Startup Investment, Stonebridge Capital, Kakao Ventures, and Campus.
42Maru
42Maru provides AI, cloud, and NLP-based question-answering chatbots. The firm develops a question-answering system based on deep learning technology and NLP-based text analytics systems. The QA system is powered by a machine reading comprehension engine and paraphrasing techniques that allow computers to understand the meaning of the text and user queries and find answers to any given question. The system is applicable to digital chatbots, smartwatches, smart speakers, smart toys, connected cars, and data warehouses.
Founding year: 2015
Total funding raised: US$9.3 million
Investors: NAVER Cloud, LG U +, Hancom Secure, Hana Financial Group, Industrial Bank of Korea, Korean Development Bank, SpringCamp, and Techstars.
SOOHO
SOOHO provides blockchain-based payment security and transaction monitoring solutions. The firm offers a solution to audit smart contracts and on-chain transactions. It also provides security assessments through API and IDE plugins to find bugs, detect vulnerable codes, and verify their safety. SOOHO leverages machine learning to analyse transactions and filter unreliable ones.
Also Read: Bering Lab raises US$2.3M to take AI-powered legal translation solution beyond Korea
Founding year: 2018
Total funding raised: US$9 million
Investors: Woori Technology Investment, Samsung SDS, LG CNS, SK, Shinhan Futures Lab, and Consensys Labs
Furiosa
It provides an AI-based inference computing solution
Founding year: 2017
Total funding raised: US$6.9 million
Investors: Korean Development Bank, Truston Asset Management, Naver, DSC Investment,
NAVER D2 Startup Factory, IMM Investment, Quantum Ventures Korea, Now IB Capital, and Schmidt.
Align AI
Align is a data analytics platform that helps builders of AI-native products convert conversational data into insights. The company provides an analytics infrastructure to manage the performance of conversational interfaces and agents. It includes a natural language search tool to find specific conversations. Align leverages semantic search to identify and generate data.
Founding year: 2021
Total funding raised: US$3.5 million
Investors: KB Investment, STH, and Danal.
ACTNOVA
It is an AI vision-based behaviour test platform provider. The company offers a web application for analysing videos and leverages AI and machine learning to identify and visualise behaviours. Users can import video files by drag-and-drop and experiment with conventional behavioral apparatuses or customise.
Founding year: 2020
Total funding raised: US$2.5 million
Investors: Hana Ventures, A-Venture, and Fast Ventures.
Bering Lab
Bering Lab offers domain-specific AI translation engines to handle complex legal document translations. Its flagship translation platform is BeringAI. BeringAI+, which combines AI technology with expert review by over 500 lawyers and 800 professional translators across over 30 countries, achieves 99 per cent translation accuracy.
Founding year: 2020
Total funding raised: US$2.3 million
Investors: SBVA (formerly SoftBank Ventures Asia) and The MBA Fund.
CMITech
CMITech provides iris recognition imagers and modules for system integrators and OEMs. Its products include an iris imager for capturing and recognising to authenticate users. The solution is applied to physical access control, healthcare, civil ID, border security, and financial applications.
Founding year: 2009
Total funding raised: US$2.1 million
Investors: Magellan Technology Investment, SBI Investment Korea, Industrial Bank of Korea, and KT Investment.
Skychips
Skychips is a provider of AI-based chips for applications. It offers a data processing solution by implementing a serial data processing method known as a parallel data processing method or CNN.
Founding year: 2019
Total funding raised: US$1.67 million
Investors: SoluM, Kingospring, P&P Investment, C&Venture Partners, Daedeok Venture Partners, Korea Investment Holdings, and Genaxis.
Testworks
Testworks provides a platform known as aiWorks that specialises in training data for artificial intelligence models. It also provides learning data collection and processing solutions and claims to provide accurate data sets for the rapid growth of AI.
Founding year: 2015
Total funding raised: US$884K
Investors: D3 Jubilee Partners and Microsoft Accelerator.
Xbrain
Xbrain provides a cloud platform for automated data science functions. The platform Daria provides multiple features for data input and processing, including oversampling, scaling, and normalization. It automatically selects the best machine-learning models for each dataset from different combinations of algorithms and hyperparameters.
Founding year: 2014
Total funding raised: US$700,000
Investors: Postech Holding, Tech Incubator Program for Startup, Capstone Partners, SparkLabs.
Dabeeo
It provides an open-source and AI-enabled mapping platform. Dabeeo’s solutions include map services for location-based services, online to offline services, and custom-made styles. It also features indoor map data, API integration, map editors, POI managers, object detection, and statistic tools. The maps offer offline services, meaning they can be downloaded to the device and user.
Founding year: 2012
Total funding raised: US$445,000
Investors: LIG Nex1, SJ Investment Partners, Mirae Asset Venture, BonAngels Venture Partners, Tech Incubator Program for Startup, igniteXL, and OpenWaterINV.
Roborus
Roborus provides smart restaurant management solutions. Its smart ordering solution greets customers and recognises their orders using proprietary AI algorithms. Based on order history, Roborus also offers personalised loyalty programmes for every individual customer. It collects customer feedback and records customer satisfaction levels by analysing their facial expressions.
Founding year: 2016
Total funding raised: US$135,000
Investors: Render Capital, Metro, Techstars, Boomtown Accelerators, ActnerLab, Right Side Capital Management, Tech Incubator Program for Startup, RISE, The Farm, LeadX Capital, MXcel, and Xcel.
Weavel
Weavel offers product analytics for conversational AI products. The platform enables users to integrate the platform into conversational products. It offers pre-built reports generated automatically for actionable insights. Weavel’s features include automatically generated pre-built reports, integration into conversational products, analysis of conversations, tracking of events, and elevating data to action.
Founding year: 2023
Total funding raised: 125,000
Investors: Y Combinator and Krew Capital.
Blue Dot
It provides AI-based semiconductor IPs. Blue Dot features 4K/8K resolution and high-definition video encoder solutions that support 5G networks for live social video, cloud gaming, immersive video VR/AR, and OTT/VOD.
Founding year: 2019
Total funding raised: Undisclosed
Investors: NAVER D2 Startup Factory, KB Investment, Smile Gate Investment, and BluePoint Partners.
DoingLAB
DoingLAB provides AI-based apps for calorie tracking and nutrition recommendations. It offers DietCameraAI, an app for tracking calories and analyzing eating patterns using an AI-based camera, and Diabetic Camera, which recommends recipes suitable for diabetes.
Founding year: 2016
Total funding raised: Undisclosed
Investors: Insight Equity and NAVER D2 Startup Factory.
ZETIC.ai
It is a platform offering pipelines for serverless AI systems. It profiles and predicts AI model performance across devices and processors. The firm offers an automated pipeline for on-target AI model library implementations and supports the integration of AI services.
Founding year: 2024
Total funding raised: Undisclosed
Investors: Korea Investment Accelerator, and TheVentures.
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