The Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced on the 15th that it held an OpenAI and domestic startup matching event (K-Startup and OpenAI Matching Day) for two days from the 14th at the Swiss Grand Hotel in Seoul, with the participation of 42 startups, OpenAI executives, AI experts, etc.

This event was held to activate the domestic AI corporate ecosystem through collaboration between OpenAI and domestic startups and to enhance the global expansion and technology development capabilities of promising AI-related startups. After this domestic preliminary event, the final OpenAI collaboration startups will be selected through the main event to be held in the US in the first half of next year.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups has been conducting open recruitment for the past two weeks in two fields: ‘API utilization field’ and ‘general collaboration field’ to select OpenAI collaboration startups. A total of 220 companies applied for the final selection of 14 companies, resulting in a high competition rate of 15.7 to 1.

In the general collaboration field, △Furiosa AI, △Bose Semiconductor, △Nine Watt, △Aeslip, △Run Korean In Korean were selected as five companies, and in the API utilization field, △Marina Chain, △Cleawant, △Next Payments, △DK Medi Info, △Hi Local, △Waddle, △Turing, △Liner Brain, and △We Laser were selected as nine companies.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups will provide opportunities for the 14 startups that advanced to the final round to visit the OpenAI headquarters in Silicon Valley and meet with developers next year, and plans to provide funding for commercialization of collaboration for the startups selected as final collaboration companies.

OpenAI plans to provide AI-related services, such as priority provision of API credits for generative AI models and 1:1 technical mentoring to final collaborating companies.

Lim Jeong-wook, Director of the Startup and Venture Innovation Office at the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, said, “I am very pleased that the event was held as scheduled thanks to OpenAI’s high interest in Korean startups and the startups’ willingness to actively collaborate.” He added, “The Ministry of SMEs and Startups will continue to work to ensure that the 14 startups selected this time succeed in their final collaboration with OpenAI and, based on this, achieve global expansion and high growth in the future.”