Tagged: seoul
13 results
Illimis Therapeutics
Illimis Therapeutics is a Seoul-based biotechnology company developing protein-based medicines for central nervous system and immune diseases. Its proprietary GAIA (Gas6-mediated Anti-Inflammatory Adaptor) platform builds bispecific fusion proteins that engage the body's TAM receptors to clear misfolded proteins such as amyloid-beta through phagocytosis without triggering the inflammation and ARIA side effects associated with existing antibody drugs. Founded in 2021, the company raised a $42 million Series B in July 2025 and is advancing a lead Alzheimer's candidate, ILM01, toward an IND by the end of 2027.
Ken Kim
Ken Kim is the co-founder and CEO of 3i Inc., a Seoul-based spatial AI company behind Beamo, an enterprise digital twin platform that 3D-scans indoor sites in minutes, and Pivo, an auto-tracking smart pod loved by video creators. A former IT consultant and commodities trader turned repeat entrepreneur, Kim built 3i around a childhood obsession with cameras and a belief that anyone should be able to capture the physical world and move it into the digital one. Under his leadership 3i raised an oversubscribed $24M Series A in 2021, grew to a global team spanning more than 20 nationalities, and holds dozens of technology patents.
Redrob
Redrob is an AI company building large language models and go-to-market tools for sales, recruitment, and prospecting. Its platform combines a 700M+ contact data pool, verified emails, and real-time buying signals to help B2B teams find prospects, automate outreach, and screen talent. Founded by former international lawyer Felix Kim, Redrob positions itself as an affordable, enterprise-grade AI stack for emerging markets and cost-conscious companies, and aims to become one of the world's most-used LLM platforms by 2028.
Aram Hong
Aram Hong is the CEO and co-founder of Apollon, a Seoul-born, Cambridge-based medtech company building MOGLU, a needle-free continuous glucose monitor powered by Raman spectroscopy. A former EY advisor and Genoplan executive who moved his family from Seoul to Boston to scale the company alongside MIT researchers, Hong has turned a laser-and-optics idea into a CES 2025 Innovation Award honoree that, in peer-reviewed clinical testing, matched the accuracy of leading needle-based sensors from Abbott and Dexcom.
Brian Nam
Brian Nam is the co-founder and CEO of DIVE Studios, a Gen Z media company born from K-pop and built for global fandoms. A former Division I soccer recruit and finance-track Columbia grad, he walked away from an elite private equity offer to build a podcast network with his brother, the K-pop star Eric Nam. DIVE has grown into a multi-platform media company spanning Seoul and Los Angeles, with hit shows like The Daebak Show, hundreds of millions of views, and a wellness app, Mindset. He is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree.
ATAD Corp.
ATAD Corp. is a Seoul-based technology company building an AI-driven multi-cloud operating platform that helps teams run AWS, Azure, and GCP environments from one place. Its flagship product, ODiiN, uses AI to forecast and self-heal infrastructure problems, claiming up to 80% cost savings and large productivity gains. Founded in 2023 by cloud and cybersecurity specialists, ATAD pairs cloud automation with a security stack built on AI, multi-factor authentication, and zero-knowledge proofs, and also runs Heiimdahl (a multi-LLM monitoring gateway) and Kraton (a blockchain-based decentralized VPN). The company has raised about $3.36M and holds a growing portfolio of patents in multi-cloud integration and secure data distribution.
Avelos Therapeutics
Avelos Therapeutics is a Seoul-based clinical-stage oncology biotech founded in 2021 that designs small-molecule drugs for 'undruggable' cancer targets using synthetic lethality, DNA damage response (DDR), and cell-cycle biology. Its lead program, AD1208, is a first-in-class oral MASTL kinase inhibitor now in a Phase 1/2a solid-tumor trial. Backed by KRW 30 billion (~$21.7M) across seed, Series A, and a 2024 Series B, the roughly nine-person team is building a biomarker-driven pipeline of four anti-cancer candidates aimed at a future KOSDAQ listing.
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.
Dongsoo Han
Dongsoo Han is the founder and CEO of z-emotion, a 3D garment simulation company building software that lets fashion brands design, fit, and render clothing entirely in 3D. A computer graphics engineer with 25+ years in simulation and gaming, he built the hair physics that became AMD's TressFX, the first playable real-time hair in a video game (Tomb Raider). He later realized a thread in 3D space moves much like a strand of hair, and turned that insight into z-emotion's products z-weave, z-fit, z-maya, and zeavric, used in projects with brands like Louis Vuitton and Nike.
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.
Jimmy Jung
Jimmy Jung is the founder and CEO of BuildBlock, a cross-border real estate platform that lets Korean and Asian investors buy, build, and manage U.S. property without ever boarding a plane. A licensed professional engineer who once helped project-manage Google's new Silicon Valley headquarters, he turned the messy, intermediary-clogged process of overseas property investment into a single end-to-end pipeline: search, financing, LLC setup, construction, management, and tax. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Seoul with U.S. offices, BuildBlock has expanded from residential brokerage into industrial plant and AI-infrastructure development.
Sungmo Park
Sungmo Park is Partner and Head of APAC Go-to-Market at a16z crypto, leading Andreessen Horowitz's first Asian office in Seoul. A quadrilingual strategist who speaks Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and English, Park bridges the gap between Silicon Valley capital and Asia's most dynamic crypto ecosystems. His career spans traditional finance at Nomura, product at NAVER, co-founding OnePlanet (a Polygon-based NFT marketplace backed by Hashed and Animoca Brands), leading APAC business development at Polygon Labs, and serving as APAC Lead at Monad Foundation before joining a16z to anchor its Korea, Singapore, and Japan expansion.
Rosé (BLACKPINK)
Rosé (Park Chae-young) is a New Zealand-born, Australian-raised South Korean singer-songwriter and main vocalist of BLACKPINK, one of the world's best-selling girl groups. Her 2024 collaboration 'APT.' with Bruno Mars became the best-selling global single of 2025 per IFPI, making her the first K-pop artist nominated for Grammy Record of the Year and Song of the Year, the first to win a Brit Award, and the first female K-pop act to crack the US Billboard Hot 100 top 3. Signed to The Black Label and Atlantic Records for her solo career, Rosé is simultaneously the most-followed K-pop solo artist on Instagram and a global fashion icon as YSL's first-ever global brand ambassador.