AI Startup Madup Draws 1,396-to-1 Demand in IPO

*Editor's Note: 'AI PRISM' (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an "artificial intelligence (AI)-based customized news recommendation and summary service" developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six customized news items by reader type.

1. 8 in 10 Koreans Use Foreign AI...Even Temporary Outages Shake Daily Life and Industry

- Key Summary: According to the Ministry of Science and ICT's 2025 Survey on the Value-Added Telecommunications Business, 78.1% of 2,500 adults aged 19 to 69 had used generative AI in the past three months, with the figure reaching 92.6% among those in their 20s. The most widely used generative AI was ChatGPT (68.1%), followed by Gemini (13.8%), while domestic models did not make it into the top ranks. Meanwhile, on the 12th of this month, the U.S. government imposed export controls completely blocking foreign nationals' access to Anthropic's latest models 'Mythos 5' and 'Fable 5,' and domestic institutions that had joined Project Glasswing also found their access cut off just ten days after joining. China's Z.ai is releasing its GLM-series models as open source and using a low-price strategy to attract global developers and startups, aiming to take the position of an alternative.

2. Anthropic Eyes Even Korean Hospitals and Banks

- Key Summary: Anthropic will launch an in-region service running Claude Opus 4.8 at the AWS Seoul Region data center within a few weeks. In-region is a method that confines an AI model's inference and data processing within the relevant region, blocking sensitive information from being taken abroad. Under electronic finance supervision regulations, financial firms must keep servers within the country when handling sensitive information such as personal credit data via the cloud, and electronic medical record standards also require the physical location of medical institutions' cloud servers to be limited to within the country. If Anthropic supports operation in the Seoul Region, the path will open for banks and hospitals to process even sensitive information with Claude, and the scope of foreign AI services' penetration into the country is expected to expand further into the corporate and public sectors.

3. OpenAI Enters Public Sector Including KIBO...Google Also Joins B2B Bidding War

- Key Summary: OpenAI has signed partner contracts with large system integration (SI) firms such as Samsung SDS, LG (003550) CNS, and SK AX, and is supplying enterprise ChatGPT to companies including LG Electronics (066570), GS Engineering & Construction (006360), Krafton (259960), and Hana Tour (039130). OpenAI is also implementing a strategy to secure long-term customers in the public sector, signing memoranda of understanding (MOU) with Korea Water Resources Corporation and the Korea Technology Finance Corporation. As a result, analysts in the industry say the strategy aims for a lock-in effect by preemptively giving employees at public institutions and state-owned enterprises nationwide experience using ChatGPT, so that they continue to prefer OpenAI tools afterward. Meanwhile, Google is supplying Gemini Enterprise to Samsung Electronics (005930), Kakao Bank, and CJ Olive Young, targeting the B2B market with the strength of integration with Google Workspace and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

4. U.S. 'AI Isolationism' Spares No Allies...Without an Independent Model, Risk of Becoming a Digital Colony

- Key Summary: At a business event in Tokyo on the 16th of this month, Masayoshi Son, chairman of SoftBank Group, warned of AI-based cyber threats, calling them "Japan's worst crisis since the arrival of the Black Ships." According to the U.K.'s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), cyber incidents on critical infrastructure such as energy, healthcare, transportation, and finance exceeded 200 over the year through May this year, of which about 75% were estimated to be linked to state actors such as Russia, China, and Iran. Accordingly, the U.S. Department of Defense is introducing generative AI into intelligence analysis, operations support, and software development, while Naver has established a dedicated organization for defense AI transformation (AX) and is developing a defense-specialized AI model based on HyperCLOVA X. Experts analyzed that, just as the race to secure semiconductors determined industrial competitiveness, access rights to cutting-edge AI and independent AI security capabilities will become the key factors determining a nation's cyber defense capabilities going forward.

5. 'Global Re-Leap' in LINE Yahoo's Embrace...Kakao Games Steps Up M&A Offensive

- Key Summary: Kakao Games (293490) held an extraordinary general meeting on the 22nd and appointed Kim Tae-hwan and Lee Si-woo as new co-CEOs, after its largest shareholder shifted from Kakao (37.93%→14.68%) to LINE Yahoo subsidiary L Triple A Investment (33.43%). It plans to target Asian markets such as Japan, Vietnam, and Indonesia by leveraging the LINE platform, which has about 200 million monthly active users (MAU), applying its successful KakaoTalk-based publishing formula to Southeast Asia. It also plans to concentrate the 300 billion won secured through the change in largest shareholder on equity investments and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in promising developers at home and abroad, and on diversifying its intellectual property (IP) portfolio. Meanwhile, amid an earnings slump marked by six consecutive quarters of losses, a shareholder coalition made up of minority shareholders is demanding substantive shareholder return policies, and Kakao Games has said it will consider liquidating non-core businesses and retiring treasury shares.

6. Madup Sets IPO Price at 8,000 Won...Aims for KOSDAQ Debut on the 1st of Next Month

- Key Summary: AI marketing firm Madup recorded a competition ratio of 1,396 to 1 in book-building targeting 2,392 institutional investors at home and abroad, setting its IPO price at 8,000 won, the top of its desired offering band. 100% of the total participating volume entered prices at or above the top of the band, and based on the confirmed offering price, the total offering amount is 16 billion won, with a post-listing market capitalization of about 150 billion won. Founded in 2015, Madup operates the AI digital marketing engine 'LEVER Xpert' based on more than 1 trillion won worth of advertising execution data accumulated over 10 years, and provides it in the form of an AI agent (a system in which artificial intelligence autonomously performs tasks) that judges and optimizes on its own. The offering funds secured through this listing will be concentrated on facility investment and personnel recruitment to advance LEVER Xpert, global market expansion centered on its North American subsidiary, and solution-based revenue growth.