# Jae Lee

> Jae Lee is the Co-founder and CEO of TwelveLabs, a San Francisco-based AI company building the world's most advanced video understanding platform. A UC Berkeley computer science graduate and former cyber security leader for the South Korean army, Lee co-founded TwelveLabs in 2021 to solve a problem no one else wanted to tackle from scratch: teaching machines to understand video the way humans do. The company has raised over $107 million from NEA, NVIDIA NVentures, Databricks, Snowflake, and SK Telecom, and now serves 20,000+ developer organizations across media, sports, advertising, automotive, and government sectors with its proprietary Marengo and Pegasus video AI models.

- **Role:** Co-founder & CEO at TwelveLabs
- **Organizations:** TwelveLabs, South Korea Foundation Model Association, SK Telecom K-AI Alliance, TechStars, World Economic Forum
- **From:** South Korea
- **Nationality:** Korean-American
- **Education:** Bachelor of Science, Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley, Accelerator Alumni, TechStars
- **Known for:** Raised $107.1M total funding from NEA, NVIDIA NVentures, Databricks, Snowflake, SK Telecom, Index Ventures, Radical Ventures, Listed on CB Insights AI 100 three consecutive times, Featured in Fast Company's innovative companies recognition

## Career timeline

- **early career** — Software engineering intern at Amazon
- **early career** — Software engineering intern at Samsung
- **pre-2021** — Lead data scientist at the Ministry of National Defense, South Korea; award-winning cyber security leader for the South Korean army
- **2021** — Co-founded TwelveLabs in San Francisco
- **2022-2023** — Raised Series A ($12M) for context-aware video AI
- **2024** — Raised $50M Series A co-led by NEA and NVIDIA NVentures
- **2024** — Keynote customer speaker at AWS re:Invent 2024
- **2024-12** — Raised $30M additional funding from Databricks, Snowflake, SK Telecom, HubSpot Ventures, and In-Q-Tel
- **2025-01** — Joined SK Telecom's K-AI Alliance
- **2025-06** — Scheduled to speak at TechCrunch Sessions: AI at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall

## Achievements

- Raised $107.1M total funding from NEA, NVIDIA NVentures, Databricks, Snowflake, SK Telecom, Index Ventures, Radical Ventures
- Listed on CB Insights AI 100 three consecutive times
- Featured in Fast Company's innovative companies recognition
- Keynote customer at AWS re:Invent 2024
- World Economic Forum profile recognition
- Board member, South Korea Foundation Model Association
- TwelveLabs serves 20,000+ developer organizations worldwide
- TwelveLabs processes 10,000+ hours of video daily at 60x real-time speed
- Marengo 2.7 achieves 78.5% composite accuracy across 47 languages
- Pegasus 1.5 enables continuous reasoning over up to 2 hours of video

## Latest updates

- **2025-06** — Scheduled to speak at TechCrunch Sessions: AI at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall
- **2025-04** — TwelveLabs announced product advancements at NAB Show 2026 with Jae Lee highlighting operational scalability
- **2025-01** — Joined SK Telecom's K-AI Alliance to advance Korean AI on the global stage
- **2024-12** — Raised $30M from Databricks, Snowflake, SK Telecom, HubSpot Ventures, and In-Q-Tel
- **2024-11** — Keynote customer presentation at AWS re:Invent 2024

## Links

- Website: https://twelvelabs.io
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leejae94
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/_jae_lee

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/jae-lee
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-12