Changwon City's 'Next Unicorn Venture Fund' Successfully Established to Support Innovative Startups

Changwon City, Gyeongnam, signed an investment agreement with Intralight Ventures and CIS through the 'Next Unicorn Venture Fund' in August last year, promising to relocate their headquarters to Changwon.
[Image source=Changwon City]

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Lee Sang-hyun] Changwon City in Gyeongnam announced on the 20th that the ‘Next Unicorn Venture Fund,’ in which the city has directly invested, has successfully raised a total of 1.7 billion KRW in funding.

The unicorn fund, established last year, targets small but strong startups with excellent technology and high growth potential among companies or founders within three years of establishment and with sales under 2 billion KRW. The city invested 2 billion KRW out of the target fund size of 22 billion KRW.

To facilitate funding, the city has been holding Venture Investment Matching Days every two months to continuously discover promising companies with outstanding technology. As a result, a total of 1.7 billion KRW in funding was achieved for three companies: AI Biotics, CIS, and Roti, the latter two of which have headquarters in other regions but wish to relocate to Changwon.

Among them, CIS, which possesses globally unparalleled innovative technology in the field of digital pathology analysis such as high-speed slide scanners, pathology scanners, and microscopes, completed its headquarters relocation to Changwon on the 13th.

CIS had its headquarters in another region but maintained a research institute at the Changwon Smart Park Industry-Academia Campus in Palyong-dong. In August last year, CIS signed a 500 million KRW fund investment agreement with the fund operator Inlight Ventures and Changwon City on the condition of relocating its headquarters to Changwon.

Following the successful operation of the first fund combined with the Mother Fund’s capital, the city is considering various ways to raise additional funds to revitalize the startup ecosystem in the future.

Park Dong-jin, Director of the New Growth Industry Division, said, “We welcome startups with innovative technology and capabilities relocating to Changwon,” adding, “We will do our best to help the rapid growth of promising startups through fund investments so that many jobs can be created.”