▲ AI PRISM* Personalized Economic Briefing
* Editor's note: "AI PRISM" (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an artificial intelligence-based personalized news recommendation and summary service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six news items tailored to each reader type.
[Key Issue Briefing]
■ Entry into Japan's AI infrastructure: Three Korean AI startups have signed on together to a Tokyo data center project run by a newly launched Japanese neocloud company. With domestic technology spanning infrastructure operating software, AI chips and large language models (LLMs) bundled into a single project, a channel has opened for building a track record in the Japanese market.
■ Race for GPU funding: Domestic neocloud companies are raising the size of their funding rounds or moving toward initial public offerings (IPOs) to secure graphics processing units (GPUs) and expand infrastructure. With demand for artificial intelligence (AI) computing surging and cases emerging in which supply cannot keep pace, competition to lock in volume is growing more intense.
■ Connecting the startup ecosystem: A securities firm and an accelerator have joined hands to build a cooperation framework spanning early-stage discovery, follow-on investment and listing, while a networking event for Korean founders is being held in New York. Channels linking capital and networks are widening at home and abroad at the same time.
[News of Interest to Startup Founders]
1. Three K-Startups Enter New Japanese Neocloud Venture Together
- Key summary: Three Korean startups — MOREH, Motif Technologies and Rebellions — have been confirmed as participants in a project by Japanese neocloud company ai&. Launched in March this year, ai& is building an AI data center in Tokyo and expanding it to 40 megawatts (MW). The center, which uses Nvidia's B300 GPUs alongside AMD's MI355X, will run on MOREH's Token Factory operating system (OS). Rebellions is supplying 100 racks of servers equipped with its second-generation neural processing unit (NPU), REBEL100, generating its first rack-level revenue in Japan, while Motif Technologies' LLM, Motif3, was included as the only Korean model among the 11 AI models offered by ai&. MOREH CEO Cho Kang-won said, "We expect that domestic AI startups will broaden their points of entry into AI business in Japan through their participation in the ai& project."
2. "Row While the Tide Is In": Neocloud Industry Speeds Up Funding
- Key summary: Domestic neocloud companies are accelerating fundraising to secure GPUs and expand cloud infrastructure. Mondrian AI plans to close a 20 billion won Series B round during the fourth quarter of this year, having raised its target from an initial 15 billion won as inquiries from venture capital (VC) firms came in one after another. Vessl AI is recruiting additional investors for a 200 billion won round at a 500 billion won valuation, while Elice Group, which is set to list on the KOSDAQ in October, expects to secure funds through its IPO. Research firm Gartner forecast that neocloud companies will account for 20% of an AI cloud market projected to reach $267 billion by 2030, and competition to secure GPUs in Korea is expected to intensify as supply falls short of demand.
3. Hana Securities Signs MOU With Bluepoint: "Cooperation on Finding Innovative Firms, IPOs"
- Key summary: Hana Securities signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with startup accelerator Bluepoint Partners on the 30th at its headquarters in Yeouido, Seoul, to support the growth of innovative companies and cooperate in the capital market. The two companies plan to work together on jointly identifying promising innovative firms, new investments, linking follow-on investment for portfolio companies, pre-IPO and secondary share transactions, IPO underwriting and financial support after listing. Founded in 2014, Bluepoint Partners is an accelerator that has invested in more than 400 startups, including deep tech firms, and the agreement connects Hana Securities' investment banking (IB) capabilities to early-stage companies. Hana Securities CEO Kang Sung-mook said, "We will expand the supply of venture capital to promising innovative companies and provide a range of financial solutions."
[Reference News for Startup Founders]
4. A Former Church Turned "Beer Shrine": Potato Beer Matures Into Chuncheon's Guinness
- Key summary: Potato Island, a craft beer brand based in Chuncheon, bought a church building more than 30 years old and converted it into a brewery and store, turning it into a local landmark. Co-CEOs Kim Kyu-hyun and Ahn Hong-jun, who met as seniors and juniors at Kangwon National University, got the idea for potato beer in a university startup class in 2019 and founded the company in 2020. They raised 150 million won in initial funding through startup competitions and government support programs and opened their first store in Udu-dong, Chuncheon, in 2021. Through the first half of last year they operated four stores, including in Seoul, but concluded there were limits to building brand identity that way and concentrated their resources on the single Chuncheon location. The store, which opened last October, draws 6,000 to 7,000 visitors a month. Six years after its founding, the company has 15 employees and is looking at annual revenue of 3 billion won, and it plans to link domestic sales with exports on the back of shipments to China that began last year.
5. AI Handles 8 Million Inquiries a Year: LG Uplus Builds a No-Wait Call Center
- Key summary: LG Uplus (032640.KS) said on the 30th that it will build an AI-native contact center with no customer waiting time by 2030. After first applying AI call bots and chatbots, AI consulting advisers and automated consultation quality assessment technology at 17 customer centers nationwide, the wait time to reach an agent fell about 90% to five seconds this year from 47 seconds two years earlier, and consultation time was cut 16%. About 8 million customer inquiries a year are handled through AI call bots and chatbots, and the time freed up is reinvested in improving consultation quality, such as giving priority to older customers and connecting sign language consultations. The company set a target of 200 billion won in revenue related to AI contact centers (AICC) by 2030, and Allied Market Research projected that Korea's AICC market will grow to $350.88 million in 2030 from $42.14 million in 2020.
6. K-Startups Gather in New York: "I Hope Founders Taking On Global Markets Connect Closely"
- Key summary: Chung Se-ju, chairman of United Korean Founders (UKF), held a press conference in Manhattan, New York, on the 29th local time to explain the significance of "KOOM Week 2026," to be held Oct. 12-18. "There are many Korean founders who have a very hard time because they have no global network even though they need to run a business," the chairman said, stressing that the effort is about using social capital to bring talent together for younger founders. The event is organized by UKF, a nonprofit that fosters the Korean founder ecosystem with North America as its base, and began in 2019 as a small networking event in San Francisco before moving to New York last year. This year, Hong Ik University architecture professor Yoo Hyun-joon, FiscalNote founder Tim Hwang, Soko Glam co-founder Charlotte Cho and Landing International CEO Chung Sae-ra will give talks on the direction of the AI era and business know-how, with side events including founder networking and Korea-U.S. university exchanges planned across Manhattan.
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