KOTRA Partners with Deutsche Telekom to Support Globalization of AI Companies

Europe's Largest Telecom... Ranked Second in Brand Power
Driving Open Innovation with Leading Korean AI Companies

The Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) announced on the 19th that it had held an event on the 18th to support business pitching and networking for promising domestic companies in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, in collaboration with Deutsche Telekom of Germany.

KOTRA Headquarters Exterior. KOTRA

Deutsche Telekom is the largest telecommunications company in Europe, headquartered in Germany. In the 2023 global telecommunications brand power rankings by Brand Finance, it ranked second after Verizon of the United States. Every year, Deutsche Telekom conducts an open innovation tour, visiting major Asian countries to discover innovative technology companies in the AI and information and communications sectors.

KOTRA seized the opportunity presented by Deutsche Telekom's interest in collaboration and, in cooperation with the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), provided a pool of promising candidate companies to Deutsche Telekom. After prior consultations, six companies were ultimately selected to participate in the open innovation program.

The main event, held at the H Avenue Hotel in Seoul, was attended by Wolfgang Metze, Head of B2C, Michael Falkensteiner, Senior Vice President of Marketing, and Klaus Werner, Head of B2B at Deutsche Telekom, demonstrating their strong interest in Korea's AI innovation companies.

The open innovation event consisted of an introduction to Deutsche Telekom's collaboration program and pitches by the six Korean companies. ICTK, a company specializing in PUF-based security solutions; Witches, an AI-based metaverse exhibition solution provider; Diov Studio and Cleon, both offering AI virtual human content solutions; Connectbrick, an AI-based video content generation solution company; and Vatonus, specializing in AI-based sign language interpretation solutions, each presented their technological strengths and collaboration points, followed by a Q&A session with Deutsche Telekom executives.

Deutsche Telekom stated that it had confirmed the technological capabilities of Korean companies in the next-generation information and communications sector at the event, and expressed its intention to review the potential for application in Europe and future directions for cooperation. Based on the results of this initiative, cooperation with Korean companies is expected to expand.

Kim Myunghee, Vice President and Head of the Industrial Innovation Growth Division at KOTRA, said, "Deutsche Telekom has great interest in Korean technology companies in the rapidly growing fields of AI, fintech, and security, underpinned by the world's top-tier 5G infrastructure," and added, "In addition to this collaboration, KOTRA plans to expand cooperation with telecommunications companies from Japan, Europe, and Asia at the 'Korea Tech Festival' to be held in early December."

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