(Bloomberg) — South Korean artificial intelligence startup Wrtn Technologies Inc. raised 25 billion won ($18.3 million) in a funding round led by BRV Capital Management.
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Existing investors including Capstone Partners Inc., Industrial Bank of Korea and Z Venture Capital also participated in the pre-Series B round, the company announced Friday.
Wrtn, pronounced as “written”, was founded in 2021 by Lee Seyoung and five friends. Since then, they have created an AI platform for 3.7 million users in Korea and Japan by bringing together several multilingual models, including ChatGPT4 from OpenAI Inc., Stable Diffusion 3 and Claude 3 from Anthropic PBC , according to Lee.
The company plans to expand to Southeast Asia and the Middle East in the near future, Lee, 29, said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. It plans to keep its service free for most users, while generating revenue through advertising and charging for premium content, it said.
“This way, the benefits of technology will be accessible to more people,” Lee said.
Wrtn focuses on teens, college students and 20-somethings, with about 70 percent of newcomers under 30, Lee said. “We will establish ourselves firmly in this segment this year and continue to grow,” he said.
–With help from Shery Ahn, Haidi Lun and Lauren Faith Lau.
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