Stone Ventures Invests a Total of 10.5 Billion KRW in Nota, Backed by Samsung, LG, Naver, and Kakao

Stonebridge Ventures announced on the 18th that it has completed an investment in Nota's Series C round worth 30 billion KRW.

With this investment, Stonebridge Ventures' cumulative investment in Nota has reached 10.5 billion KRW, securing the largest share among institutional investors in Nota and becoming one of its key portfolio companies.

This investment comes about a year after raising 17.5 billion KRW in the Series B round last year. Existing investors including Stonebridge Ventures participated in the Series C round with additional investments. A global artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor company's CVC joined as a strategic investor, while Stick Ventures, Korea Development Bank, DS Investment Partners, and Mirae Asset Securities joined as new investors. As a result, Nota has raised approximately 53.2 billion KRW in cumulative investments.

Stonebridge Ventures has continuously invested in Nota since its sole investment in the pre-Series A round in 2019, followed by Series A in 2020, Series B in 2022, and the current Series C, focusing on the outstanding technology and scalability of Nota's AI lightweight solution, ‘NetsPresso’. Nota counts global tech companies such as NVIDIA, Intel, and ARM as clients, and its technology has been recognized by major domestic system integrators including Samsung, LG, Naver, and Kakao, who have also invested in the company.

In particular, Nota is a portfolio company that embodies Stonebridge Ventures' deal sourcing philosophy. Instead of relying on venture capital networks, they select investment targets through a top-down approach based on industry and technology analysis to discover industries and related companies with growth potential. As AI technology has become prominent and mainstream, they identified the importance of solutions that compress and lighten AI execution models trained by deep learning, leading them to discover Nota.

As a major shareholder holding the largest stake among Nota's institutional investors, Stonebridge Ventures has joined the board of directors and regularly consults closely with CEO Cha Myung-soo on important agenda items, playing a crucial role in value-add activities such as recruitment and introducing investors.

Song Young-don, Managing Director of Stonebridge Ventures who discovered and led the investment in Nota, said, "Starting with the sole investment in 2019, this fourth investment was made based on strong trust in Nota's management performance and future business plans." He added, "In particular, the fact that global top-tier semiconductor companies have selected Nota as their optimal software partner is the decisive reason why the company can achieve outstanding growth in the on-device AI market."

Meanwhile, Nota's developed platform ‘NetsPresso’ optimizes AI models to run on the device itself, enabling AI model operation tailored to the device. Large-scale contracts with major AI semiconductor companies have officially begun. Based on this, Nota has selected Mirae Asset Securities as the lead manager and plans to file a preliminary review application for listing early next year.

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