Gurumi Acquires Smoothie Service... "Full-Scale Entry into the Metaverse"

Plan to Launch Metaverse Service Based on Advanced AR and Facial Recognition Technology

CEO Lee Rang-hyeok of Gurumi (left) and CEO Cho Hyun-geun of Smoothie are taking a commemorative photo after signing the contract. Photo by Gurumi

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Heeyoon] The video conferencing platform Gurumi announced on the 14th that it has acquired the multi-party video call service Smoothie.

This acquisition is a contract to acquire all resources necessary for the service, including intellectual property rights related to Smoothie's eponymous service 'Smoothie.' Smoothie's executives and employees were excluded from the acquisition.

'Smoothie' is a service that allows up to eight people to have video calls while seeing each other's faces, with 1.5 million users worldwide. It supports differentiated user communication through AR emojis, stickers, and real-time reaction effects. On Samsung 5G phones, users can communicate with others through avatars that mimic their facial expressions. In particular, the service allows effects such as touch, typing, vibration, and sound to be delivered to the entire chat room, enabling communication that expresses emotions in more delicate and diverse ways.

Gurumi plans to combine its video communication technology with the user-centered services provided by Smoothie, accelerating its entry into the metaverse business alongside Smoothie's operation by advancing AR technology and facial recognition technology.

Cho Hyun-geun, CEO of Smoothie, said, "Smoothie's executives and employees are fully committed to developing new services in a completely new direction and will soon present the results under a new name," adding, "We decided to sell the service based on the judgment that Gurumi, which possesses high-level video communication technology, can advance the Smoothie service and grow it into a platform that users can be more satisfied with."

Lee Rang-hyuk, CEO of Gurumi, stated, "Gurumi possesses the best video call technology in Korea, making it the optimal startup to develop and operate Smoothie, which uses the same video call technology," and added, "We plan to further strengthen the existing business model within the Smoothie service and launch a metaverse-based video service by advancing AR and facial recognition technologies for users of both Gurumi and Smoothie."

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