Lee Soo Man, the founder and former chief producer of K-Pop pioneer SM Entertainment, has invested up to 10 billion won ($10 billion) in funding for MindLogic, a South Korean startup that develops large-scale language models and conversational artificial intelligence models. The company plans to invest $7.5 million. .
According to the Korean startup industry, MindLogic raised 7 billion won from Lee in a Series B funding round in January. Lee, who is the sole investor, is said to be in talks with the startup to invest an additional 3 billion won, the person added.
With Lee's funding in January, MindLogic has raised a total of 12 billion won since its founding in 2019. Other investors include DSC Investment Inc., Strong Ventures, Tekton Ventures and Partec Partners.
Mindlogic focuses on developing AI agents, which refers to AI tools that can autonomously perform complex tasks from prompt to product. We provide solutions that utilize chatbots.
Our flagship product is a persona chatbot that, based on training, has the unique personality and knowledge of a particular person and can converse like a real human. It combines OpenAI's ChatGPT with the startup's proprietary dialogue engine to generate conversations.
Thanks to MindLogic's proprietary long-term memory technology called Persona Engrams, Persona chatbots can remember not only the names of their conversation partners, but also previous conversations, giving them a better understanding of their human partners' emotions and moods. You will be able to have more intimate conversations. The company says it will talk to them.
Lee is said to have high expectations for Mindlogic's technological advancements and the widespread application of chatbot services.
Persona chatbot goes to the world
Persona chatbots are said to be safe from privacy risks thanks to personal data and intellectual property (IP) protection technology, despite their ability to learn a particular person's personality through training.
Persona chatbot's AI technology detects IP-related information during conversations and stores it on a separate server so that it is not used for machine learning.
The company also said it has enhanced hallucination suppression technology that minimizes the risk of generating false information or unethical dialogue. Persona chatbots can also have voice conversations.
MindLogic plans to use the latest funding to advance its technology, as well as expand its intellectual property partnerships and presence domestically and internationally.
There are also other types of customized chatbots that can be used to provide customer service on e-commerce sites to improve the shopping experience and encourage product purchases.
We also offer sales chatbots that gather the information needed to inform potential customers about your products and services and suggest solutions tailored to their needs and interests.
The company's homepage chatbot is a service aimed at increasing website visitor engagement.
Lee is actively looking for good investments
MindLogic is one of the few promising startups that former SM Entertainment chief producer Lee has invested in.
He has since sold 14.8% of his shares to HYBE, the music company behind K-pop sensation BTS, for more than 500 billion yen after quitting the pioneering Korean entertainment company, home to NCT, Red Velvet and aespa. , has been gradually increasing its investment activities. He won in February last year.
Lee used the proceeds to invest last year in South Korean biotech company ProGen, a drug developer with the Neo Tri-ImmunoGlobulin (NTIG) platform, and Chinese drone maker EHang.
He is also expected to reap significant profits from his previous 1 billion won investment in South Korean drone startup Pablo Air in 2019.
Pablo Airlines is said to be aiming to go public this year with a valuation of over 100 billion won. Mr. Lee owns 20% and is his second largest shareholder in the startup.
Lee still holds more than 3% of SM Entertainment's shares.
Write destination Kim Joo Wan kjwan@hankyung.com
Sookyung Seo edited this article.