Alchera, a company specializing in image recognition and artificial intelligence (AI), announced on the 18th that it had signed a contract with Suhyup Bank to "build a mobile banking ID recognition and copy verification system." The contract amount is 860 million won, and the term is until January 2024.

Last August, Alchera won a contract with the Korea Financial Telecommunications and Clearings Institute (KFTC) to build a joint facial recognition system for ID cards, a project implemented in accordance with the Financial Services Commission's financial sector voice phishing countermeasures plan. As financial institutions gradually began to adopt the system, Suhyup Bank also signed a contract with Alchera to build the system.

Alchera announced that it has achieved notable orders this year in its target markets, the public and financial sectors. The company's facial recognition technology's performance was recognized through benchmark testing (BMT) for B2B clients requiring a high level of technological reliability, including Incheon International Airport, Sejong Government Complex, and the Korea Financial Telecommunications and Clearings Institute.

As a result, it was reported that this led to the conclusion of the contract with Suhyup Bank, and that additional orders from financial institutions are expected in the future.

Additionally, Alchera recently implemented a paid-in capital increase to strengthen its global market penetration and financial soundness.

On the 11th, the board of directors held a meeting and announced that it would carry out a paid-in capital increase of a total of 57 billion won. Through this financing, the company plans to prioritize investments of KRW 20 billion and KRW 16 billion in AI learning data construction and AI solution supply businesses, respectively, and use KRW 21 billion to repay convertible bonds to improve financial stability and soundness.

The main investment is in expanding the global base of AI learning data, which is the core of AI, and in fine-tuning the Visual Foundation Model to meet the diverse AI needs across industries.

The AI learning data construction business, a vital development step that serves as a preprocessing step in the AI solution development process, has seen an average annual sales increase of 142% from 2020 to 2022. According to the 2023 semi-annual report, total orders for this business division reached KRW 7.1 billion as of the end of June, exceeding the previous year's annual sales.

“We are currently supplying data curation personnel through our subsidiary in Vietnam, but we need to expand our business base for sustainable growth,” said Hwang Young-gyu, CEO of Alchera. “We will actively respond to the growing demand for AI not only domestically but also globally by investing in acquiring a local business location in Vietnam, expanding our workforce, and increasing our servers, and we will strengthen our cost competitiveness.”

He continued, "While we've focused on securing growth foundations in the individual areas of 'AI data, AI solutions, and AI services,' we plan to shift our growth focus to an integrated approach." He added, "Along with full-scale growth expansion, we plan to pursue a profitability-focused business strategy to enhance shareholder value and increase profitability."