00:06A VC veteran who bet on Phantom of the Opera and Hyugol just said Korea's own venture funds need to
00:12invest abroad before global money will flow back in.
00:16A 3-year-old robotics startup just locked in Samsung, Hyundai, LG and SK Telecom as seed investors before it
00:25had a single public product launch.
00:27A Korean beauty retailer is about to double its U.S. store count in three months flat.
00:33And a small ultrasonic tech startup just became the lead partner on a European Union-funded research program.
00:40It's Thursday, October 15. Let's look at what this means for startups and entrepreneurs in Korea.
00:47Korea's venture capital industry is pushing harder into overseas deals, arguing reciprocity is the only way to attract foreign capital
00:56back.
00:56At the same time, Korean conglomerates are racing to back early-stage robotics and data startups before competitors lock in
01:04the best deals.
01:05Korean consumer and industrial brands are also accelerating overseas expansion, from beauty retail in the U.S. to EU-funded
01:13research partnerships in Europe.
01:15Here's what the numbers show.
01:16Aju IB Investment has invested 400 billion won, about $286 million, in venture and private equity deals this year through
01:26September, already topping its 379 billion won annual target.
01:31The firm is raising a new $220 billion overseas-focused fund, about $157 million, equal to roughly 67% of
01:41everything it raised for overseas investing between 2013 and 2022.
01:46Config Intelligence, founded in 2024, secured seed funding this April from Samsung Venture Investment, Hyundai's Zero One, LG Technology Ventures,
01:57and SK Telecom.
01:58The startup's Hanoi Human Factory employs roughly 500 people, collecting about 20,000 hours of robot training data a month,
02:07totaling over 150,000 hours and 10 million episodes to date.
02:12Silicon 2 opened three Moita stores in the U.S. last month, and plans eight more by year-end, roughly
02:19doubling the three stores it opened over the prior two years.
02:22Naver's Chisk streaming app passed 10 million cumulative downloads last month, with September active users of 4.5 million, nearly
02:31double Rival Soup's 2.3 million.
02:34So, what does this mean for founders and entrepreneurs in Korea?
02:38Earlier, we said a VC veteran argued Korean funds need to invest abroad first.
02:43Here's what that actually means for you.
02:45If you're raising from Korean VCs, expect more interest in deals with a credible path to overseas expansion, not just
02:53domestic scale.
02:54The seed money flowing into Config Intelligence shows Korean conglomerates are willing to back infrastructure-layer startups early, especially in
03:03robotics and AI data.
03:05And the Moita and Firstlab examples show the same logic applying outside tech.
03:10U.S. retail footholds and EU research partnerships are both bets that global reach now beats domestic share later.
03:18That's today's AI Prism.
03:21Founders
03:22This episode was produced with AI Assistants based on Seoul Economic Daily reporting and reviewed by a human editor.
03:29A.I. Prism is a Juan Ifra award-winning series.
03:33We'll be back tomorrow.
03:34You've been listening to AI Prism from Seoul Economic Daily.
