[SBA x IT Donga Joint Planning] The Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Seoul Business Agency (SBA) have established startup hubs (centers) in Chang-dong, Seongsu, and Dongjak, Seoul. They are fostering startups by discovering them and supporting them with stage-by-stage programs from initial startup to growth phase. Promising startups with high growth potential that have shown remarkable activities by 2025 are introduced.

AligoAI is a startup operating the intermediary platform 'Celevu', which helps marketers easily and quickly execute advertisements with celebrities. Based on its self-developed AI recommendation algorithm, it matches products with suitable actors, singers, athletes, etc., and presents them to advertisers. Previously, more than two months were required to execute an advertisement after going through a complicated contract process to recruit celebrities. AligoAI emphasized that it has reduced the time taken from searching for celebrities to executing advertisements to just five days. CEO Lee Jang-hyuk of AligoAI provided a detailed introduction to the service.



AI quickly and accurately matches celebrities suitable for advertising products…‘Celevu’

CEO Lee Jang-hyuk is currently a full-time professor of marketing at Korea University Business School. He stated that he was able to establish the company and showcase the technology thanks to the faculty startup system.

CEO Lee said, “Thanks to the faculty startup system, which allows those working in research institutes or universities to start a business, I was able to realize the service I had envisioned based on theory.” He co-founded a company called mOculus in 2012, which was a big data utilization solution company that customized mobile banner ads for individuals and sold it to FSN, which provides the ‘Cauly’ service, in 2015. He confirmed the strong demand in the advertising industry for quick results with minimal resources while operating his first company. Based on this experience, he founded AligoAI in 2020.”

He continued, “AligoAI applied the very traditional idea of connecting celebrities to advertisements to enhance advertising effects to fast-paced online advertising, developing the Celevu platform.” He explained, “AI leads celebrity searches, appropriate price estimation, and advertising content creation, helping with fast and accurate matching. For example, if you command in natural language, ‘Find a model suitable for the car brand Hummer,’ the AI not only lists model candidates but also presents the number of followers, countries where they are popular, and reasons for recommendation to assist advertisers in making choices.”


Currently, about 150 celebrities are registered on Celevu based on business agreements between entertainment agencies and AligoAI. AligoAI plans to expand its scope to include not only domestic but also international celebrities.


CEO Lee stated, “In the past, advertisers had to contact agencies, introduce the advertisement content, shortlist candidates, and go through a document contract process, which took more than two months, and most contracts were long-term. Offline shooting also required enormous costs.” He added, “Celevu helps execute advertisements quickly online and conducts short-term contracts, allowing sufficient advertising effects even with a small budget. According to internal statistics, matching celebrities to online exposure-type advertisements through Celevu improved efficiency by more than three times. It only took five days from celebrity search to advertisement execution. The goal is to reduce this period by one more day by the end of the year.”

Riding the K-content wave, expanding overseas…Planning to arrange celebrity fan meetings and performances in remote areas

CEO Lee stated, “Currently, we are focusing on upgrading Celevu to a global platform. To secure celebrities of various nationalities to match with overseas advertisers, we have selected staff not only in Korea but also in France and Hong Kong, and plan to hire talent in more countries.” He added, “Global fans who prefer K-content are not only in big cities, so we plan to provide a service called ‘K-Celeb Global Everywhere’ that intermediates fan meetings or small performances at events held in small cities through Celevu. Also, if there are advertisers who want to execute very small advertisements, we are preparing to match aspiring singers or actors who are not yet famous, facilitating advertising brokerage of various budget scales. If Celevu can establish itself as a platform that opens opportunities not only for celebrities but also for singers or actors who have not yet gained fame, it will have the effect of revitalizing the pop culture industry.”

He continued, “So far, Celevu has intermediated collaborations between global brands like Chaumet, Golden Goose, Bonpoint, and Wild Turkey with celebrities. I particularly remember the process of collaborating with actor Jin Seo-yeon for Wild Turkey, where the advertisement execution period was drastically reduced.” He added, “With the global K-content wave, there is expected to be demand for Celevu in several countries. Therefore, we plan to expand the market based on the Japanese, Chinese, and Southeast Asian markets, where the preference for Korean celebrities is high, to the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. We will also continue to expand collaborations with premium brands located in France and Italy. In addition to collaborating with rapidly growing domestic advertisers like Jennifer Room, Maksoon, and Bplain, we will also start collaborating with global e-commerce. We plan to utilize the developed technology and experience to introduce more influential brands and products.”


AligoAI is accelerating the enhancement of its services to realize these plans.

CEO Lee stated, “There are countless brands and products on Earth. There is a limit to continuously expanding the learning scope for AI to quickly and accurately grasp the characteristics of any brand or product. Instead, it is necessary to narrow the learning scope and deepen it. For example, it is more important to sharply understand the tuna sold by a tuna brand first, rather than learning about the tuna brand’s AI business, as the scope is too broad.” He added, “Another important learning target is the advertiser. If we can preemptively understand which models and content a specific advertiser prefers and utilize it in responses, more accurate and faster matching will be possible. We will deepen the information on brands and products and additionally learn the characteristics of advertisers to create a smarter recommendation AI.”

He continued, “There were many trials and errors before Celevu came to life. I remember knocking on the doors of agencies to secure celebrities, not just developing technology.” He added, “Overcoming trials and errors and promoting solution development and enhancement has been greatly supported by the Seoul Business Agency (SBA). We were able to use the augmented reality (AR) studio for free by residing in the SBA Chang-dong Center. We are creating promotional content with AR features there. As recommended by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and Seoul Startup Hub Chang-dong, we participated in the 2025 Try Everything event on September 11 and 12, and we expect it to lead to results. We plan to showcase various forms of advertising content based on new technology, so please pay attention to AligoAI’s progress.”

IT Donga Reporter Kim Dong-jin (kdj@itdonga.com)

Popular News