Gwangju Jeonnam Small and Medium Business Administration Discovers Outstanding Startups Through Competition

Changepoint-Beatflow Team Wins AI Industrial Intelligence Award

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Lee Gwan-woo] The ChangePoint-Bitflow team won the Grand Prize and the Minister of SMEs and Startups Award at the ‘AI Testbed Korea Industrial Intelligence Competition’ hosted by the Gwangju-Jeonnam Regional Small and Medium Venture Business Administration.

The Gwangju-Jeonnam SME Administration announced on the 17th that it held the final round of the competition jointly organized with Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Gwangju Creative Economy Innovation Center, and the Korea Artificial Intelligence Association from the 14th to the 16th.

To prevent the spread of COVID-19, the competition minimized on-site attendance to AI experts as judges and on-site support staff, conducting the entire event in a non-face-to-face manner.

The ‘AI Testbed Korea Industrial Intelligence Competition’ was planned to create new business models by combining regional strategic industries with artificial intelligence technology and to support commercialization, targeting early-stage startups.

Since July, tasks were discovered from regional strategic industry companies such as energy, automotive, and healthcare, and 80 teams of AI solution providers and demand companies competed.

Among the 80 participating teams, 30 teams that passed the AI expert evaluation participated in the final IR competition, presenting new business models incorporating artificial intelligence technology.

The ChangePoint-Bitflow team, which won the grand prize, proposed a business model called ‘Currency (coins, bills) recognition solution using machine learning and vision cameras,’ receiving the Minister of SMEs and Startups Award and a prize of 2 million won.

The Excellence Awards went to the InBiz-SysGear team and the DeltaX-LockFunding team, who received the Gwangju-Jeonnam Regional Office Director’s Award, and the SevenPointOne-Central University Next Generation Big Data Statistics Research Lab team, who received the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology President’s Award and a prize of 1 million won.

Among the awarded companies, 10 teams will be selected to receive 28 million won each in commercialization funds to ensure that their business models do not end with the competition but can be commercialized.

Lee Dong-hyun, CEO of ChangePoint, who won the grand prize, said, “Since the early stages of our startup, the introduction of artificial intelligence was urgent, and through this competition, we were able to introduce machine learning technology into our foreign coin unmanned exchange machine.”

Lee Hyun-jo, head of the Gwangju-Jeonnam SME Administration, said, “We are building an open startup platform to establish an AI ecosystem, and we hope many will take interest and participate,” adding, “We hope this competition will serve as an opportunity for both demand and supply companies to grow together based on the connections made.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.