Artificial intelligence (AI) service startup Riiid Technologies has joined the ranks of “unicorn” companies with a corporate value of more than KRW 1 trillion. It is the fifth domestic AI startup to do so, following AI semiconductor companies Rebellions and FuriosaAI, AI entertainment tech company Galaxy Corporation, and generative AI company Upstage. As global venture capital increasingly flows into AI companies, AI-related unicorns are rapidly emerging in Korea as well.

● Unicorn in 5 years… Monetizing consumer AI

On the 26th, Riiid announced that it had raised KRW 100 billion in Series C funding, bringing its cumulative investment to approximately KRW 230 billion. In this funding round, the company was valued at more than KRW 1 trillion.

Founded in 2021, Riiid operates the AI portal “Riiid” and the AI character chat platform “Crack.” Its flagship service, Riiid, is an “AI portal” that allows users to choose from multiple generative AI models such as ChatGPT and Claude and ask questions, or automatically connects an AI model suited to the user’s query. On Crack, an AI entertainment service, users can converse with AI characters, apply various settings such as romance or fantasy, and create their own stories. Unlike existing AI unicorns that have focused on proprietary AI models, semiconductor development, and business-to-business (B2B) transactions, Riiid concentrates on connecting AI with consumers.

The company’s recognition as a KRW 1 trillion–level business just five years after its establishment has been driven by rapid monetization and overseas expansion. Riiid’s revenue climbed from about KRW 3.1 billion in 2024 to KRW 47.1 billion last year, more than a 15-fold increase in just one year. This year, revenue is projected to exceed KRW 200 billion.

In particular, its global expansion strategy centered on AI characters and story-based content is powering its growth. Building on the popularity of Crack among users in their teens and 20s, the company launched “Kyarafoo,” an AI character chat and simulation platform, in Japan last year. In May this year, it introduced “OOC,” an AI entertainment content platform targeting the North American market. OOC is an extension of Crack tailored for North America, and surpassed monthly revenue of KRW 10 billion just three months after launch.

● Global capital pivots to AI… AI emerges as a new axis of Korean unicorns

The scope of domestic AI unicorns is also expanding rapidly. After Rebellions achieved unicorn status in December 2024, FuriosaAI and Galaxy Corporation followed last year, and Upstage joined the unicorn ranks this April. According to the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, the number of unicorn companies in Korea increased from six at the end of 2018 to 27 at the end of last year, more than quadrupling in seven years. Notably, in 2023, venture investment in the “AI models and infrastructure” segment was the largest among Korea’s 12 major new industries, totaling KRW 1.3 trillion.

This trend is not unique to Korea. According to big data platform Crunchbase, global startup investment in the first half of this year (January–June) reached an all-time high of USD 510 billion, of which just two AI companies, OpenAI and Anthropic, attracted USD 217 billion, accounting for 43% of the total. In the first quarter (January–March), as much as 80% of global venture capital was concentrated in AI companies, underscoring the pronounced skew toward the sector.

The founding of AI startups by big tech talent is also continuing, as illustrated by Jeff Dean, who led AI development at Google for 27 years and recently left to launch the AI startup “Discovery Loop.” As it has become possible for small teams to rapidly build products by leveraging cloud services and AI models, AI startups are drawing both capital and talent.

Lee Sung-Yeop, professor at the Graduate School of Management of Technology at Korea University, said, “AI investment is expanding from core technologies such as semiconductors and AI models to consumer-facing services,” and forecast, “Because services related to generative AI can scale quickly in global markets, the pace of unicorn creation will accelerate.”

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