The Ministry of Science and ICT (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT Bae Kyung-hoon) and the Korea Telecommunications Operators Association (KTOA) held the final round of the Adventurous and Challenging AI Startup Investment Prospect Discovery Competition on September 17 at the Texpo Hall of the Textile Center in Samseong-dong, Seoul, selecting ‘Stillcut’, a company holding technology that prevents the forgery and alteration of AI-generated content and verifies authenticity, as the grand prize winner. The event was designed to open the door to real investment and growth opportunities for AI startups struggling with early-stage financing.
 [코리안투데이] Finals and awards ceremony of the Adventurous and Challenging AI Startup Investment Prospect Discovery Competition © 장형임 기자 |
The competition was organized to provide a springboard for investment and scale-up to startups that possess innovative technical capabilities and growth potential yet struggle to secure early-stage funding. Rather than relying on quantitative indicators such as revenue or investment amounts, the judging focused on technical excellence, future growth potential, and the originality of the business model. The final evaluation criteria consisted of technology and innovation (30 percent), suitability for venture investment (30 percent), market and business viability (30 percent), and team capability (10 percent).
Held for the second time following last year, this year’s competition drew even fiercer interest. Compared with the 91 companies that applied last year, roughly three times as many — 268 companies — flocked to the event this year, marking a competition ratio of 33.5 to 1. Reflecting this heightened interest, the Ministry of Science and ICT elevated the award given to the grand prize winner to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT Award.
Follow-up support is also materializing. Last year’s winners, ‘HitmetricX’ and ‘Terramime’, received space at Venturium, a residency dedicated to startups, while the eight companies that reached the finals were given opportunities to attract investment through the Korea IT Fund (KIF), which was established with contributions from the nation’s three mobile carriers. This year, the ministry plans to newly form an ‘AI Adventure Fund’ based on the KIF parent fund, which will focus its investment on competition winners and early-stage companies less than three years old, thereby supporting fledgling startups.
On the day, eight companies that had cleared the preliminaries out of the 268 applicants competed in the finals, with a large number of domestic and international experts in investment and acceleration participating in the judging. As a result of the evaluation, ‘Stillcut’ (CEO Lee Jung-hoon), which holds AI security solution technology that blocks deepfakes before they are created and verifies authenticity after they are made, received the grand prize, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT Award. The Excellence Award (second place) went to ‘Quantum Hitech’ (CEO Ahn Hyun-ju), which has an AI platform technology that predicts the remaining lifespan of batteries without disassembling them, and the Merit Award (third place) went to ‘Motif Drive’ (CEO Cho Seok-hwan), which holds AI-based autonomous driving software.
The Encouragement Awards went to five companies: Metacrowd (CEO Kim Hyung-jin) for its AI voice phishing detection service ‘VoiceShield’, Allincarbon (CEO Lee Sang-hoon) for its manufacturing AI infrastructure platform ‘HyperKernel’, Ziro (co-CEOs Lee Jae-seok and Hwang Gil-hwan) for its AI image and video generation platform ‘Dropshot AI’, CrossHub (CEO Kim Jae-seol) for its AI-based fintech platform for foreign residents, and PlanBy Technologies (CEO Roh Hyun-seop) for its generative AI-based architecture and construction workflow automation solution.
The eight finalist companies will receive a total of KRW 80 million in prize money along with KIF-based investment opportunities such as the ‘AI Adventure Fund’, and will be offered a range of benefits including linkage to major support programs of the Ministry of Science and ICT. In particular, the top three teams will additionally be given the opportunity to move into Venturium, operated by the KTOA, and to participate in overseas investment relations (IR) events. The prize money amounts to KRW 30 million for the grand prize, KRW 15 million for the Excellence Award, KRW 10 million for the Merit Award, and KRW 5 million each for the Encouragement Awards.
Park Tae-wan, Director-General for Information and Communication Industry Policy at the Ministry of Science and ICT, said, ‘We have heard many voices in the field saying that early-stage AI companies face great difficulty in attracting investment.’ He added, ‘We hope this competition serves as priming water that helps AI startups leap to the next level, and going forward we will continue to expand such growth opportunities based on close cooperation with the private sector, including the KTOA.’
In an early-stage entrepreneurial ecosystem where excellent technologies can easily go to waste due to a lack of funding and recognition, this competition holds significance in that it serves as a conduit connecting promising technology firms to actual investment, residency space, and even pathways to overseas expansion. In particular, with technologies directly tied to citizens’ safety in daily life — such as deepfake prevention and voice phishing detection — sweeping the awards, the event demonstrated that AI technology competition is also spreading in a direction that reduces everyday risks.
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