Mashup Ventures, an early-stage startup investor, said on the 11th that it has closed a 25.9 billion won ($17.6 million) fund called Mashup First Believer Venture Investment Fund No. 5 without government policy money, and will use it to back promising startups in artificial intelligence and deep tech.
Partners at Mashup Ventures are the largest contributors to the fund, which also drew money from successful founders, startups, information technology and manufacturing companies, and financial institutions. The fund has a 10-year life and will focus on companies at the pre-seed stage, when founders are still preparing to launch, and at the seed stage, when they raise their first outside capital.
Its main investment areas are physical AI, vertical AI tailored to specific industries, energy and aerospace. The firm plans to expand deep tech investments under Chief Investment Officer Park Eun-woo, who previously led global expansion as chief strategy officer at autonomous drone company Nearthlab.
Mashup Ventures is an early-stage investment firm led by Lee Taek-kyung, a co-founder of Daum, and has invested in about 220 companies since 2013. It was the first institutional investor in 87% of those companies. Its portfolio includes Bucketplace, operator of the interior design platform Ohou, as well as MyRealTrip, Remember & Company, Wrtn Technologies and ScatterLab. More recently, it has widened its scope to space, advanced materials and energy with investments in O&B Space, NanoForge AI and Biologen.
The firm has also added specialists to strengthen its capacity to invest in technology startups. This year it recruited AI partner Yang Sung-min, a former engineer who has founded and sold companies, and venture partner Lee Sang-won, a co-founder of Silicon Valley deep tech company Quixo. They will review the technology of early-stage portfolio companies and support product development and overseas expansion.
“Even when the paradigm was shifting from the internet to mobile, we believed in the potential of founders who jumped into an uncertain market and we invested in them,” Lee said. “Now that AI is moving into industrial settings such as robotics, energy and space, we will be the first investor to believe in founders before their technology is proven.”
#MashupVentures#VentureCapital#DeepTech#PhysicalAI#KoreanStartups#SeedFunding
Original reporting by Jang Hyung-im for Seoul Economic Daily.
AI-translated from Korean. Quotes from foreign sources are based on Korean-language reports and may not reflect exact original wording.
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