Seoul City 'AI Yangjae Hub' Resident Companies Secure 37.5 Billion Won Investment Despite COVID Crisis

Over 80 Resident Companies Achieve Approximately 15.2 Billion KRW in Sales and 37.5 Billion KRW in Domestic and Foreign Investment in Q2
Two AI Companies, Including Vehicle Infotainment and Document Digitization Service Firms, Each Secure Over 10 Billion KRW

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] AI startups residing in the ‘AI Yangjae Hub,’ a technology startup incubation center for artificial intelligence (AI) in Seoul, have continued to achieve steady investment attraction results and maintain growth momentum even amid the COVID-19 crisis.

On the 19th, the Seoul Metropolitan Government announced that about 80 resident companies at the ‘AI Yangjae Hub’ recorded approximately 15.2 billion KRW in sales and attracted 37.5 billion KRW in domestic and overseas investments in the second quarter of this year. Notably, considering that the total investment amount for last year was 52.1 billion KRW, the second quarter alone achieved about 70% of last year’s total investment.

Among the resident companies, DreamAce, a company specializing in in-vehicle infotainment solutions, and Agore Digital, which provides document digitization services, stood out by attracting new investments of 12.5 billion KRW and 13.9 billion KRW, respectively.

Additionally, resident company ‘Neurocle’ developed deep learning vision software that can be easily used by non-experts and won the President Award of the Korea Information and Communication Promotion Association at the ‘2021 Korea Impact Tech Awards’ hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT. ‘RocketView’ launched ‘Jjikgeom,’ a mobile service based on OCR technology that allows users to check desired information simply by photographing price tags, surpassing 200,000 app downloads.

Seoul City has expanded the number of resident companies at the ‘AI Yangjae Hub’ from about 80 to 100 this year by recruiting new resident companies in four rounds. Approximately 60 companies applied for the fourth round of new resident company recruitment, which closed on the 13th. After evaluation, the finally selected companies will be housed in 20 independent office rooms and 32 open office seats.

To expand the AI industry base throughout Seoul, a membership program has also been actively implemented to allow non-resident companies to receive corporate support from the ‘AI Yangjae Hub.’ Following the pilot project last year that selected 50 companies, an additional 59 companies were selected this year, supporting the growth of 109 companies in total.

Hwang Bo-yeon, Director of Economic Policy at Seoul City, said, “In the COVID-19 situation, as non-face-to-face technology has become mainstream and the demand for new growth industries has increased, resident companies have turned the crisis into an opportunity, achieving remarkable results in sales and investment attraction, growing into companies attracting global attention. We will continue to do our best to support many AI companies to grow as future leaders of the AI industry at the ‘AI Yangjae Hub.’”

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