Startups in Korea are looking to incorporate AI technology into their existing products or service. The reason is that a lot of Korean investors are very interested in investing in Korean AI startups. The Korean government said that it will invest over $330 million in the development of processing-in-memory (PIM) chips. This is in addition to their pledge of $830 million into AI semiconductors from 2020 to 2029.

The Korean government has already built 6 new AI schools in 2020/2021 to educate Korean engineers in AI technology. In addition, corporations are also looking to get into AI technology. Furthermore, Samsung, LG, Naver, Kakao, and Hyundai have shown great interest to invest in AI technologies. Therefore, it is clear that both the Korean government, investors, and companies think AI is an important technology for Korea.

Here are the top 20 AI startups in Korea to keep an eye on for 2022

1. DeepBrain AI

DeepBrain AI is a Korean AI startup that researches and develops conversational AI technology. They offer a wide range of AI-powered customer service products. However, their specialty is in synthetic humans that are able to respond to natural language questions. They use AI technology to offer video and speech synthesis and chatbot solutions to enterprise customers such as MBN, Metro News, LG, and KB Kookmin Bank. They showcased their AI human imbedded “AI Kiosks” at CES 2022. It leveraged the power of AI with its human-based AI avatars.

AI Human Avatars

In order to create AI Human avatars, DeepBrain AI first captures a video of a human model in a studio and then uses AI to analyze the model’s lip, mouth, and head movement. Therefore, it is great for creating virtual AI bankers, teachers, and even news anchors. Their revenue in 2021 was $5 million due to the rise in demand due to COVID. Moreover, DeepBrain AI has been able to raise over $50 million to date led by Korea Development Bank. The startup is currently valued at $180 million.

“There is only a very limited number of companies both locally and globally with high-quality deep learning-based voice synthesis technology. We will achieve excellent performances in diversified business domains with our competitive technology, which is at par with those of global companies,” said CEO of DeepBrain AI, Eric Jang.