Gyeonggi Province Governor Kim Dong-yeon, attending the '2025 World Economic Forum' (Davos Forum), has begun active diplomacy and investment attraction activities, emphasizing the need for cooperation with Gyeonggi Province by meeting with global unicorn companies.
Gyeonggi Province announced on the 22nd that Governor Kim started the official Davos Forum schedule on the 20th (local time) by attending the Innovator Communities Reception and Dinner.
The Innovator Communities Reception and Dinner is known as a key venue for information exchange and building cooperative relationships among global startup leaders.
The World Economic Forum gave special significance by officially introducing Governor Kim as the only attendee from the reception.
Jeremy Jurgens, Managing Director of the World Economic Forum, introduced Governor Kim as the governor of Gyeonggi Province, which opened the Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, representing South Korea.
The Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a regional cooperation hub established through consultations between the World Economic Forum and various countries or regions to respond to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Since its first establishment in San Francisco, USA, in 2017, 25 centers worldwide, including Germany and India, are currently operating.
Governor Kim agreed last year at the Davos Forum to establish the Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in Gyeonggi Province in cooperation with the World Economic Forum.
Gyeonggi Province started operations in January this year by setting up the Gyeonggi Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution at the Pangyo Creative Economy Innovation Center. The official opening ceremony will be held later.
The Gyeonggi Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution is also attracting attention from the World Economic Forum as it is the first center focusing on startups.
At the subsequent official reception dinner, Professor Yoshua Bengio, founder of the Machine Learning Research Institute at the University of Montreal, Canada, and Meredith Whitaker, Chair of the Signal Foundation, delivered keynote speeches emphasizing cooperation to minimize the negative impacts of the artificial intelligence (AI) era.
Gyeonggi Province Governor Kim Dong-yeon (left) is meeting with Motoyuki Arai, CEO of Global Unicorn Startup, on the 21st (local time) to discuss cooperation plans. Photo by Gyeonggi Province
On that day, Governor Kim exchanged views with various economic figures and global company representatives, introducing the situation in South Korea and Gyeonggi Province. In particular, he devoted himself to sales activities for Gyeonggi Province by meeting with 20 global unicorn companies (unlisted startups valued at over 1 trillion KRW).
The unicorn companies Governor Kim met included Adam Goldstein, co-founder of Archer, USA, known for developing electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOL); Motoyuki Arai, founder of Synspective, a Japanese small satellite developer; and Robert Falck, CEO of Einride, Sweden, which develops autonomous trucks.
Additionally, he met with representatives of unicorn companies leading the AI field, such as Jasper.ai, an AI marketing platform developer known as a robot writer; Squirrel AI, an educational technology company specializing in intelligent adaptive learning; and Crusoe, an AI cloud company.
The World Economic Forum, which began on the 20th and runs until the 24th in Davos, Switzerland, is the world's largest 'brainstorming' meeting where distinguished businesspeople, economists, politicians, and journalists from over 130 countries gather to discuss economic issues and seek international practical tasks.
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