Wrtn Technologies (hereafter Wrtn), an artificial intelligence (AI) service platform company, has raised $18 million (KRW 2.5 billion) in a pre-Series B round from global investors from the US, Japan and South Korea. The investment follows an $11 million (KRW 1.5 billion) Series A in June last year, bringing Wrtn’s cumulative funding to $32 million (KRW 4.4 billion).
The round was originally a quick follow-on led by existing investors, known as an ‘insider round’, and was completed earlier this year, but is said to have been significantly expanded with the participation of new international investors. It is also understood that discussions with some new investors are ongoing, so the final amount may change in the future.
The round was led by new investor BRV Capital Management (hereafter BRV), with participation from existing investors Capstone Partners, Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK), and Z Venture Capital (ZVC).
BRV is the Asian growth investment platform of BlueRun Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based VC known for its early investments in Waze, which became the core technology behind Google Maps, and PayPal, which has continued to grow as a global fintech company, while ZVC is the corporate-led venture capital (CVC) arm of LY Corporation, the Japanese Internet company that operates LINE and Yahoo! Wrtn, which established a Japanese subsidiary last year, is accelerating its overseas expansion by providing localised, generative AI-based web and app services.
In March, Wrtn launched a major overhaul, bringing AI search to the forefront as a core feature and incorporating various UX and UI improvements to enhance the user experience. Wrtn allows users to create their own AI character chatbots and has also enhanced its AI portal services, including chat, studio and tools.
In addition, Wrtn has unparalleled analysis technology for more than 25 million user-AI conversations per month, and based on this, Wrtn is working to develop and deploy the AI Compound System, which combines different AIs to maximise users’ actual performance. Wrtn is also actively integrating RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) technology and AI agent technology into our services to overcome the limitations of the existing LLM.
Yeemin Chung, Managing Director of BRV, said: ‘With every major technological shift, BRV has focused on identifying promising companies that will define the future of their respective industries. Just like the introduction of railways, electricity and the internet, the transnational efforts to build the AI infrastructure that the market is currently witnessing are ultimately aimed at enabling the everyday marriage of AI and humans. Wrtn’s methodology for democratising AI, and the user response to it, makes us excited to see the company successfully expand beyond Korea and Japan into other non-English speaking markets.”
“As the era of AI service competition is expected globally, Wrtn aims to be the AI service platform where everyone can get the help they need in the easiest and most convenient way,” said Se-young Lee, CEO of Wrtn. “With this investment, we will focus on developing and improving the products and services that the times demand, and grow into a leading AI democratisation company by focusing on companies with high competitiveness and technical capabilities to make this possible.
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