Nam Hyun-woo has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2013, mostly covering business and politics. He currently belongs to the Business Desk where he covers topics such as emerging tech, AI, ICT and Korea's chaebol community. Prior to joining the team, he was the paper's correspondent for the presidential office of Korea during the Yoon Suk Yeol and Moon Jae-in administrations.
WRTN raises $72 mil. in Series C funding round
A promotional image of WRTN Technologies' artificial intelligence-based entertainment platform, OOC / Courtey of WRTN Technologies
By Nam Hyun-woo
Korean artificial intelligence (AI) service provider WRTN Technologies has raised approximately 100 billion won ($72.23 million) in a Series C funding round, the company said Wednesday.
According to WRTN, the company was valued at more than 1 trillion won in the latest funding round, becoming the first Korean AI service startup to surpass the mark. WRTN has raised a total of 230 billion won in funding so far.
This time, Coreline Ventures and Eugene Asset Management joined the Series C round as new investors, while existing investors including Goodwater Capital, Antler Global, Woori Venture Partners and the Korea Development Bank also participated.
Coreline Ventures is a U.S.-based venture capital firm with offices in Silicon Valley and Tokyo. It has invested in promising companies in the consumer and business-to-business technology markets in Korea, the U.S. and Japan. Coreline Ventures’ major portfolio companies include Korea’s mobile giant Kakao and China’s Happy Elements, which is known for casual game franchise Ensamble Stars.
Osuke Honda, co-founder and managing partner of Coreline Ventures, said WRTN is quickly becoming “a global phenomenon,” citing the company’s rapid growth and monetization, as well as the ecosystem impact it is already creating in Korea, Japan and the United States, as a rare combination. He added that Coreline Ventures has strong confidence in WRTN’s team capabilities and its significant growth potential.
WRTN has demonstrated its monetization capabilities with its AI entertainment content platform OOC, which was launched in North America in May. The service surpassed 10 billion won in monthly revenue within three months of its launch, with overseas sales exceeding domestic sales.
WRTN’s flagship business is its namesake AI platform, which offers users free access to leading large language models such as GPT, Claude and Gemini. The company, however, generates revenue through AI-based services such OOC and its character chat platform Crack.
Driven by the growth of these businesses particularly in overseas markets, WRTN said its total revenue this year is expected to surpass 200 billion won, up from 47.1 billion won last year, the company said.
The company said it is also stepping up efforts to strengthen user protection and safety. In July, WRTN launched a user committee comprising experts in areas including AI ethics and philosophy and law. It is also working with the Korea Internet Self-Governance Organization to establish self-regulatory guidelines for AI character chatbot services.
“For the past five years since our founding, we have established ourselves as Korea’s leading AI service company and demonstrated our global competitiveness, which enabled us to successfully complete this funding round,” WRTN CEO Lee Se-young said.
“We will focus on global expansion and further advance our services to meet market expectations, while accelerating our growth as a provider of safe and trustworthy AI services.”