Announcement of Scale-up TIPS General Type Company Support Plan

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced on the 7th that it will publicize the '2025 Scale-up TIPS (General Type) Company Support Plan' to support the challenges, innovation, and scale-up of technology-intensive promising SMEs and startups.

Scale-up TIPS is a program that supports SMEs and startups in the full growth stage by providing up to 1.2 billion KRW in government research and development (R&D) funding over three years when they attract investments of 1 billion KRW or more from operating companies. Additionally, companies that achieve results such as attracting follow-up investments can receive up to 2 billion KRW in funding through equity investments from the Korea Fund of Funds.

Starting this year, a global track has been newly established to focus on supporting R&D for companies aiming to expand overseas, providing up to 1.5 billion KRW in R&D funds over three years. As support is strengthened, stricter requirements such as attracting a certain amount of overseas investment are expected compared to the general type. Detailed information will be announced separately. The general type projects being recruited this time total 102, supporting promising SMEs and startups based on strategic technologies such as the 10 super-gap fields, 12 national strategic technology fields, and carbon neutrality fields.

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To intensively support R&D in strategic fields such as artificial intelligence (AI) and biotechnology, a specialized support system will also be introduced. Among the existing 24 operating company consortia, those with outstanding discovery performance and R&D support capabilities in the relevant fields will be designated as ‘specialized operating companies,’ and strategic field specialization capabilities will be a key evaluation criterion in future operating company selections. Changes will also be encouraged within existing operating company consortia to respond to diverse corporate support demands. To strengthen capabilities and functions, additions and changes to consortium composition will be allowed, and the evaluation and incentive system for operating companies will be improved focusing on actual scale-up support performance.

Furthermore, each operating company will be encouraged to operate dedicated coordinators to support companies’ R&D execution. Coordinators will play a role beyond that of project managers (PMs) by actively facilitating cooperation among consortia to ensure companies conducting Scale-up TIPS R&D receive sufficient support.

The linkage between R&D and equity investment will also be strengthened. Previously, after receiving preliminary investment from an operating company, companies could choose between R&D or equity investment support. From this year, to enhance the effectiveness of support and meet the rapidly increasing funding demand after R&D execution, the system will be reorganized so that companies first conduct R&D and then receive equity investment support according to their growth.

Over the past three years, more than 1.5 trillion KRW in funds have been invested in a total of 379 companies through Scale-up TIPS, combining public and private sectors. Among these, the scale of preliminary investment by private operating companies reached approximately 583.3 billion KRW, and 111 selected companies attracted about 556.7 billion KRW in follow-up investments from venture capital and others. Among the companies supported by Scale-up TIPS, nine have successfully gone public (IPO), demonstrating the activation effect of private investment in innovative companies and the growth promotion effect.

Park Yong-soon, Director of the Technology Innovation Policy Division, said, “We have improved the system to produce tangible results, such as changing the linked investment method to be performance-based,” and added, “Through innovative R&D support models like Scale-up TIPS, we will strengthen the foundation for SMEs and startups to challenge technology development in strategic fields and support them to become a core growth engine of the national economy.”

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