SK Square Invested in 'Onmind', Hana Bank Also Invests 2 Billion KRW

3D Virtual Human Creation Technology, AI Banker & Virtual Analyst

Image of 'Nasua,' a 3D virtual human created by Onmind. Photo by SK Square

[Asia Economy Reporter Oh Su-yeon] SK Square announced on the 21st that Onmind, a 3D virtual human production company in which it made its first investment since the company's launch in November last year, successfully secured a 2 billion KRW investment from Hana Bank.

Hana Bank acquired a 6.25% stake (newly issued shares) in Onmind through this investment. Onmind's corporate value increased by 1.5 times in one year. The corporate value recognized by Hana Bank for Onmind is 30 billion KRW. At the time of SK Square's investment in November last year, Onmind's corporate value was 20 billion KRW.

Hana Bank focused on virtual humans as one of the elements to accelerate digital financial innovation and joined Onmind's strategic investors. With Hana Bank's participation, Onmind's virtual human collaboration ecosystem has significantly expanded from the existing SK Square and SK Telecom's information and communication technology (ICT), Neptune's gaming, to Hana Bank's finance sector.

Globally, financial services utilizing virtual humans such as AI bankers and virtual analysts have become active. Starting with this investment, Hana Bank plans to utilize virtual humans at various customer touchpoints, including AI bankers, live commerce models, and kiosk digital guides within bank branches.

Onmind plans to actively invest in research and development (R&D) to advance virtual human technology using the secured funds. They will massively recruit excellent developers and establish a ‘studio platform’ business that allows enterprises (B2B) and individuals (B2C) to easily create and operate virtual humans.

Hana Bank's investment in Onmind is the result of SK Square's growth strategy for its portfolio companies. SK Square focuses on increasing the corporate value of its portfolio companies and growing together through ▲supporting new investment attraction and ▲expanding collaboration ecosystems with SK ICT family companies.

A representative example is SK Telecom and Onmind jointly producing the ‘AI virtual human,’ and Onmind's virtual human ‘Nasua’ being selected as the advertising model for SKT AI service ‘A.Dot.’ Notably, by utilizing SK Telecom's AI-based voice synthesis technology, they achieved a natural virtual human voice close to a real person without pre-recording by voice actors.

SK Square plans to further expand collaboration with SK ICT family companies so that Onmind's virtual humans can evolve into ‘AI virtual humans’ capable of moving and conversing independently without model motion capture or voice actors.

Ryu Byung-hoon, Managing Director of SK Square, said, “This investment attraction is a case where SK Square's portfolio company achieved corporate value growth in a short period despite difficult macroeconomic conditions,” and added, “We will actively utilize SK Square's unique investment know-how and collaboration ecosystem to enhance portfolio value.”

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