Polaris Office Group is acquiring Linos, a KOSDAQ-listed company specializing in ICT and fashion brands. The group aims to secure technological competitiveness to enable Polaris Office to evolve into an AI+cloud company in the long term, as well as to create synergy between the groups.
On the 27th, Polaris Office Group announced that it will acquire Linos, an ICT and fashion brand specialist company that has been recently strengthening its AI (artificial intelligence) business. Polaris Office Group signed a stock and management rights transfer agreement to acquire 13,927,386 shares (29.02%) of existing shares from Oditek and TS 2015-9 Growth Strategy M&A Investment Association, the joint largest shareholders of Linos, for 42.6 billion KRW. In addition, it will participate in a third-party allotment capital increase of Linos worth 16.8 billion KRW to lay the foundation for enhancing corporate value.
Founded in 1991, Linos operates its main businesses in the IT division, including SI and IT solutions, and the F&C division of fashion brands Kipling and Eastpak. Recently, it has expanded its AI new business by acquiring management rights of PowerVoice, a voice AI specialist company, and launching an AI home platform. Although the fashion division experienced a temporary downturn after COVID-19, it succeeded in turning profitable from the third quarter of this year through innovation and change.
A representative of Polaris Office Group stated, "Through this investment, we plan to focus on securing new growth engines and enhancing corporate value centered on Polaris Uno and Polaris Sewon, which are undervalued compared to their high asset value."
Polaris Uno is recognized for its outstanding technology and profitability, ranking among the global top 3 in the synthetic fiber business for wigs. Polaris Sewon supplies global automakers through its customers in the automotive air conditioning parts sector. Both companies have been preparing for active business expansion based on solid business competitiveness and stable financial structures.
In particular, the most anticipated area through this acquisition of Linos is the technological synergy in the AI field with Polaris Office, which is emerging in the AI office new business sector.
Recently, Linos has strengthened its AI business competitiveness by acquiring PowerVoice, an AI voice recognition solution technology company. PowerVoice possesses unique technology in the domestic voice interface field, specializing in 'voice recognition' and 'speaker authentication.' In the voice recognition field, it obtained the highest GS Grade 1 certification in Korea for its STT (Speech-To-Text) solution. Its technological capabilities have been recognized to the extent that related products are already registered with the Public Procurement Service.
Polaris Office officially launched the AI office platform 'Polaris Office AI' in September, applying excellent generative AI functions such as OpenAI's 'ChatGPT,' Naver's 'HyperCLOVA X,' and Stability AI's 'Stable Diffusion.' Based on a global cumulative subscriber base of 127 million, it is creating a new growth foundation as an 'AI cloud company.'
The representative added, "Along with Polaris Office AI, we plan to grow into an AI platform company that can expand document creation areas to new devices such as mobility, including the recently launched Tesla display-based vehicle mode web office. Through cooperation with Linos, which has technological strengths in voice recognition AI and ICT fields, we will strengthen the technological competitiveness of the AI platform and make company-wide efforts to improve the overall corporate value of the group."
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