SBVA Invests in AI-Based Search Engine You.com

SBVA announced on the 5th that it has participated in a $46 million (approximately 61.7 billion KRW) Series B investment in You.com, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based search platform.

This round of investment was led by Canadian venture capital (VC) Georgian, with participation from SBVA, NVIDIA, Salesforce Ventures, and others. The total cumulative investment amount is $95 million (approximately 127.4 billion KRW).

You.com is a U.S. startup co-founded in 2021 by world-renowned AI researchers Richard Socher and Brian McCann. It was the first in the world to apply large language models (LLM) to the search experience and has processed about 1 billion queries since its establishment. It currently has millions of active users.

In particular, it provides a sophisticated and personalized search experience through features such as the ‘Research Assistant,’ which analyzes dozens of sources simultaneously to provide accurate reports, and the ‘Genius Assistant,’ which solves problems and calculations through conversational prompts without entering equations or formulas. Through this investment, You.com plans to actively pursue not only the B2C (business-to-consumer) market but also the B2B (business-to-business) market and diversify its subscription models.

Lee Jun-pyo, CEO of SBVA, explained the reason for the investment, saying, “You.com is a pioneer in LLM services for general consumers and is a platform that provides top-level answers to users’ questions based on strong technical expertise. We expect it to present a new user experience for AI search engines by ensuring the reliability and transparency of information.”

Richard Socher, CEO of You.com, said, “As generative AI rapidly penetrates daily life, inaccuracy remains a major challenge. Based on this investment, You.com will establish itself as a platform that provides users with reliable and useful answers to complex questions that cannot be solved by simple search engines alone.”