Saltlux Signs MOU with 10 Companies to Foster AI Startups

[Startup Wars Awards Ceremony and MOU Group Photo, Photo by Saltlux]

Saltlux, a leading domestic artificial intelligence company that recently succeeded in going public, announced on the 21st that it held an awards ceremony and signed MOUs with the top 10 outstanding companies selected in the AI startup competition ‘STARTUP WARS: EPISODE 1’ (hereinafter referred to as Startup Wars), which was conducted to secure an AI ecosystem through discovering startups.

Startup Wars, which began in March, saw participation from over 100 AI startups, and after fierce competition, 10 companies were selected. Among them, the top 4 companies gave their final presentations at ‘SAC (Saltlux AI Conference) 2020’ held at COEX in June. On the 15th, representatives from the top 10 AI startups gathered at Saltlux for the awards ceremony and MOU signing.

The 10 startups finally selected are Gitple (chatbot), NewsJelly (big data visualization), MindAI (AI conversation engine), Circulus (humanoid robot), Soynet (AI inference), Anylective (AR/VR hologram), Otdil (robot MD), Wayne Hills Ventures (AI digital content automation production), Coconut Silo (cargo transportation), and Hunter Global (music big data analysis). (Order: alphabetical by Korean pronunciation)

The final 10 companies in Startup Wars will receive a total prize of 30 million KRW and opportunities to attract investments up to 10 billion KRW. In addition to prize money and investment, startups will be provided with practical benefits they need, such as Saltlux’s AI/big data technologies including natural language processing, speech recognition, speech synthesis, image recognition, and chatbots, as well as high-performance servers and data. Furthermore, generous support for nurturing and coexisting with startups will be provided, including domestic and international promotion and joint marketing when pursuing collaborative projects, transfer of the latest Saltlux AI technologies, joint business and customer development, and provision of project workspaces.

Saltlux CEO Lee Kyung-il said, “Many companies participating in this Startup Wars have potential and technological capabilities comparable to Saltlux,” and added, “Following this Episode 1, we will continuously discover and support startups and grow together with them.”