Participated · Seed · Jan 2025

Vivident is developing MoeLive, a platform that creates anime-style character IPs using generative AI and blends Japanese animation culture with K-pop entertainment systems. The product generates unique characters with distinct personalities and supports autonomous performance through generative AI, real-time livestreaming, multi-user participation, and social media interactions. MoeLive includes an interactive growth system that lets fans participate in character development via activities and voting, and allows users to create and operate their own AI characters. Vivident plans to launch a beta service in the first half of 2025 and target simultaneous releases in South Korea, Japan, and the United States by the end of 2025. The company was founded in May 2024 and will use the seed funding to develop its first service. The founding team has experience at Krafton, Hyperconnect, Neosapience, Supertone, and UNOPND.

Participated · Seed · Aug 2024

Trillion Labs is building a Korean-language large-language model and plans to launch its first open-source AI model by the end of the year. The company says the open-source model will be free to use and adapt, with plans to later develop closed systems for enterprises and to build models in Japanese and Chinese. Founded in April, Trillion Labs has a six-person team led by cofounder and CEO Jay Shin, a former Naver research scientist with eight years of NLP research experience. The startup came out of stealth with $4.2 million in seed funding that will be used to help build the Korean LLM. Trillion Labs declined to disclose valuation and says it will continue to raise capital. Management positions the company as aiming to prevent domination of Korea's AI market by foreign foundation-model providers.

Participated · Seed · Jul 2024

Metel builds an SNS marketing solution aimed at helping B2B companies enter and grow in global markets. The company focuses on content-generation and analytics capabilities tailored for social networks. It plans to use recent funding to further develop its core content creation and analysis engine. Metel intends to offer comprehensive SNS-driven global B2B marketing services once the platform enhancements are complete. The company recently completed a seed financing that provides initial capital to support product development and go-to-market efforts.

Led · Seed · Feb 2024

Spotlight (스포트라이트) operates a professional model and creative-talent sourcing platform that simplifies booking for commercial shoots by letting users search and hire talent by date, budget, and other conditions. The product consolidates a fragmented commercial-shoots talent market into a single marketplace, described as like Airbnb for brands seeking creative talent. The company was founded via Antler's startup program and is led by CSO Benjamin Alexander Hori and CEO Choi Hanna, with team members who previously worked at Samsung, Google Korea, and Hyperconnect. Spotlight recently raised a ₩600 million seed round and had earlier secured a ₩200 million pre-seed through Antler eight months prior. The startup plans to use the capital to expand into Thailand and broader Southeast Asia, strengthen AI-driven search and recommendation features including image-recognition-based similar-look model recommendations, and introduce advance-payment (선정산) systems to address talent payment defaults. Spotlight is the first model-sourcing platform registered as a member of the Korea Fashion Industry Association.

Participated · Equity · Jul 2023

Munice's core product, Miracle Night, is a neuroscience-backed mobile app that delivers personalized sound profiles (more than 80 parameters) described as a customizable "digital sleeping pill." The app was developed after founder Shawny's research at Yonsei University's lab, which identified mono bits of sound that smooth brain waves into a low, steady state and increase deep sleep ratios in clinical trials. Miracle Night is non-toxic, accessible on-demand, and continuously fine-tunes its algorithm using user data to improve effectiveness. Since its launch in May of last year the app has grown at roughly 33% month-over-month. Munice is targeting university students, has signed MoUs with 15 South Korean universities, and is in talks with George Mason University, the University of Florida, and UC Santa Barbara. The company is pursuing expansion in the wellness/mindfulness markets across Asia and the United States and has secured funding to support that growth.