korea-startup
(9)
Sangmin Park
Sangmin Park is the CEO of 현대엠시스템즈(주) (Hyundai M Systems), a Suwon-based Korean company that builds intelligent safety systems for construction equipment. Founded in 2003 and now part of the Hyundai Mirae-ro Group, the company combines cameras, 24GHz radar and controllers into products like AVM-RDS (Around View Monitor with Rear Detection System) that reduce blind spots and prevent accidents on excavators, wheel loaders and forklifts. Under Park, the company became a tier-1 supplier to Volvo Construction Equipment and Hyundai (HD) Construction Equipment, raised a 5 billion won Series B in July 2024, and set its sights on becoming the world leader in construction-equipment safety.
Yu-Sung Chang
Yu-Sung Chang is the co-founder, CEO and CTO of Vivity AI, an industrial AI company building software for heavy industries like petrochemicals, shipbuilding and manufacturing. A computer scientist with a Ph.D. from Stony Brook University, he spent years at Wolfram Research working on Mathematica's graphics and geometry systems before moving into e-commerce technology leadership as CTO of Korea's SSG.COM and co-founding the healthcare AI startup Huma.AI. In 2022 he founded Vivity AI, which raised roughly $8.4M in a round backed by Hanwha Systems, to close the gap between the physical and digital worlds on the factory floor.
Ilsu Park
Ilsu Park is the co-founder and CEO of Mars Auto, a Seoul-based startup building camera-based, map-free self-driving software for heavy trucks. A KAIST computer science graduate and self-taught deep-learning engineer, he started with a hobby project that used a driving-game simulator to train a neural network, then turned that idea into a company that runs paid autonomous freight in Korea and the United States. Mars Auto takes a Tesla-style vision-first approach, skipping LiDAR and HD maps to cut the cost of automating a Class 8 truck to roughly $7,000 per unit. Park has raised about $12 million, graduated from Y Combinator, and made the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list. He is targeting fully driverless long-haul freight by 2028.
EdgeCross
EdgeCross (엣지크로스) is a South Korean industrial AIoT company that turns ordinary factory machines into 'smart machines' without ripping out existing equipment. Its MODLINK edge devices bolt onto CNC machines, compressors, robots and other gear to stream live data, while its MachineManager SaaS and LLM-powered MachineGPT let operators monitor, self-diagnose and literally chat with their machinery in plain language. Founded in 2015 as VITCON and rebranded EdgeCross in 2022, the company says more than 8,000 machines now run its devices, generating roughly 3.2GB of operational data per day.
EPIKAR Inc
EPIKAR is an AI-first technology company purpose-built for automotive retail. Founded in Seoul in 2016 by former BMW Group Korea executive Bosuk Han, EPIKAR digitizes and automates the vehicle purchase journey - from lead capture and 24/7 self-service showroom access to AI-powered consultations, test drives, contract conversion, and aftersales service. Its modular platform is already deployed at Renault, BMW, and Volvo dealerships in South Korea, and the company has relocated its headquarters to the United States to test AI showroom kiosks in the world's most mature car market.
Ettifos
Ettifos is a South Korea-based, 5G-focused V2X (vehicle-to-everything) company building the communication layer that lets cars, roadside infrastructure, and pedestrians exchange safety and traffic data in real time. Its flagship SIRIUS platform uses a software-defined modem that can switch between LTE-V2X and 5G-V2X with a software update, and its plug-and-play V2X-AIR onboard unit brings standards-compliant connectivity to both new and existing vehicles. Founded in 2018, the company works with partners like Keysight, Autotalks, Audi, and Kapsch TrafficCom, and closed a Series B round in 2025 to scale a C-V2X hardware accelerator chip and expand into U.S. and European markets.
Spoqa
Spoqa is a Seoul-based software company that builds tools for the people who run shops and restaurants. It first became known for Dodo Point, a tablet-based loyalty service that replaced paper stamp cards across tens of thousands of Korean stores and signed up tens of millions of customers with nothing more than a phone number. After selling Dodo Point to Yanolja in 2022, Spoqa rebuilt around Kitchenboard (formerly Dodo Cart), a B2B platform that helps restaurant owners order, manage, and pay for their ingredients - matching them with vendors and using AI to turn messy supplier chats into structured orders. Along the way Spoqa also released Spoqa Han Sans, a free, open-source Korean typeface used widely across the Korean web.
Grant Sohn
Grant Sohn is the co-founder and co-CEO of Spoqa, the Seoul-based company behind Dodo Point, Korea's #1 offline rewards service, which grew past 20 million users and 10,000+ merchant partners. A Stanford economics graduate and former McKinsey analyst, he left consulting in the United States to build loyalty software for brick-and-mortar shops in South Korea. In 2018 he co-founded Carry Protocol, a blockchain venture aiming to give shoppers control of their own transaction data, and after selling Dodo Point to Yanolja in 2022, he refocused Spoqa on restaurants with Kitchenboard.
Hyesung Kim
Hyesung Kim is the founder and CEO of Mineis, the Seoul company behind Charan, a full-service fashion recommerce platform that collects, inspects, cleans, photographs, prices, sells, and ships used clothing on the seller's behalf. A University of Chicago economics grad who started his first ad-tech company as an undergrad and later worked as a venture investor, Kim built Charan to remove the friction that keeps closets full of unworn clothes. The platform passed 400,000 users within a year of its 2023 launch, was named to Forbes Asia's 100 to Watch in 2024, and raised a 16.8 billion won Series B in 2025, bringing total funding to 32.2 billion won.