SMEs ministry, FSC link seed and growth funds at second meet-up

The SMEs ministry and the Financial Services Commission held the second joint meet-up linking the Mother Fund and the National Growth Fund at Korea Growth Investment Management in Yeongdeungpo, Seoul, on Thursday.

The event was organized to make policy-finance support a standing arrangement, building on a first meet-up in June, so that innovative companies discovered and nurtured by the Mother Fund in their early and mid-stages can tap large-scale financing from the National Growth Fund as they scale up.

Seven promising companies attended — five of them technology firms the SMEs ministry had raised through the Mother Fund, and two proposed to the Financial Services Commission's growth-company discovery council by ministries and the private sector — covering artificial intelligence, bio, climate tech, defense, robots and physical AI.

Dnotitia, which develops acceleration solutions for large language models using vector databases, presented its technology road map and plans to raise large-scale funding. Its chief executive, Chung Moo-kyung, said linking the National Growth Fund's capital would be a decisive moment for commercializing its technology and entering global markets. "If policy financing adds continuous support through this meet-up, we can take a leap forward as a big tech company leading the global AI market," he said.

Alongside Dnotitia, the attending companies included Pyler and Torook in AI and service robots, T-Robotics in physical AI platforms, Roen Surgical in medical surgical robots, Telepix in low-orbit satellites and Enlighten in solar power and other energy climate technology.

Companies said the present moment, when decisions on global market entry and large-scale commercialization are made, is a golden time for scaling up, and agreed that building a virtuous financing cycle in which the National Growth Fund's follow-on capital arrives at the right time is most important.

Park Min-sik, an executive director at Korea Investment Partners who serves as a lead fund manager for the National Growth Fund, said the standing support system established through the meet-up would help both investors and companies, adding that his firm would act as a key channel for rapid scale-ups and global expansion through the fund's mid-size league.

Fund managers with investment authority from the National Growth Fund attended and held one-on-one private meetings to weigh each company's technological feasibility and the prospects for large-scale fundraising.

Organizers expect the expanded discovery channels to strengthen direct networking between investors and companies and to make policy-finance investment more continuous. The SMEs ministry and the Financial Services Commission plan to make the meet-up a regular event, reviewing themed sessions for artificial intelligence, bio and regional innovative companies based on demand.

Kim Bong-deok, the SMEs ministry's venture policy director, said the link connecting policy funds must be settled more firmly so that AI and deep-tech startups that built their growth base on the Mother Fund's seed investment can become global unicorns. "We will actively discover promising companies in each field together with private venture capitalists and share them on a regular basis," he said.

Son Young-chae, head of the Financial Services Commission's National Growth Fund task force, said the first event in June confirmed the possibility of linking venture capital, while the second was about laying a sustainable support system to secure continuity in funding. "We will pursue regularizing this event while also considering linking themed meet-ups by session for AI, bio and regional innovative companies according to demand on the ground," he said.