Wrtn Technologies has become the first South Korean artificial intelligence service startup to reach unicorn status.
The company said on the 26th that it recently closed a funding round worth 100 billion won ($73 million). That brings its cumulative funding to 230 billion won. U.S. venture capital firm Coreline Ventures and Eugene Asset Management joined as new investors, while existing backers including Goodwater Capital, Antler Global and Woori Venture Partners made follow-on investments.
The round valued Wrtn at more than $1 billion, or about 1.4 trillion won, making it the first Korean startup developing and selling consumer AI services to join the unicorn ranks. A unicorn is a privately held company valued at $1 billion or more.
Wrtn offers a free AI service that lets users select from various AI models to perform tasks such as search, document drafting and presentation design. It also generates paid revenue through Crack, an AI character chat service. The company has pursued aggressive marketing, signing singer G-Dragon as an endorser last year and securing the main sponsorship of G-Star, the country's largest game show, this year.
Wrtn is also expanding overseas with Crack, which operates under the local brand names Kyarafu in Japan and OOC in North America. As the AI character chat business gained traction in both markets, the company's overseas revenue surpassed its domestic revenue. Wrtn posted revenue of 47.1 billion won last year and expects to reach 200 billion won this year on the back of growth in both domestic and overseas operations.
"We will focus on global expansion and service development to meet market expectations, and grow quickly as a safe and trustworthy AI service company," said Lee Se-young, chief executive of Wrtn.
