Responding to Rapid Market Changes in the AI Sector
50 Additional New Projects Through the Supplementary Budget
On May 8, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced the integrated notice of the "2025 Scale-Up TIPS Company Support Plan," a private-led R&D program that supports the challenges, innovation, and scale-up of technology-intensive promising SMEs and startups, reflecting the first supplementary budget for 2025.
The Scale-Up TIPS program is designed to support SMEs and startups in their full-fledged growth stage. If a company attracts an investment of at least 1 billion KRW from an operator, the government will provide up to 1.5 billion KRW in R&D support over three years. In addition, companies that achieve results such as attracting follow-up investments can receive up to 2 billion KRW in funding through equity investment from the Korea Venture Investment Corp. (KVIC) Fund of Funds.
On April 7, the Ministry announced its support plan for 102 projects. This latest announcement is an integrated support plan covering 176 Scale-Up TIPS R&D projects, which includes the previously announced projects, 50 additional projects funded by the supplementary budget, and 24 projects under the Global Track.
First, to respond to the rapid technological and market changes in the AI sector, the number of new Scale-Up TIPS (general type) projects has been increased from 102 to 152 through the first supplementary budget for 2025. In particular, with the introduction of the specialized operator system starting this year, the discovery, investment, and close R&D support for promising AI companies are expected to proceed at an even faster pace.
To focus on supporting the R&D of companies targeting overseas expansion, a Global Track has also been newly established, providing up to 1.5 billion KRW in R&D funding over three years. The requirement to attract a preliminary investment of at least 1 billion KRW from a Scale-Up TIPS operator remains unchanged. However, to verify global expansion capabilities, applicants must have either attracted a cumulative investment of at least 1 million USD from foreign VCs or other sources, achieved cumulative overseas sales of at least 500,000 USD over the past three years, or established a local presence such as an overseas office or corporation. This year, there are 24 new projects under this track, with 50% of them to be prioritized for selection from innovative companies that have participated in major Ministry support programs such as TIPS and Super Gap Startups, in order to maximize outcomes through policy linkage.
The Ministry plans to support promising technology companies in developing innovative technologies that can compete in the global market through the Global Track, and will operate networking and local R&D hub programs to help companies pioneer global markets based on their R&D achievements. Park Yongsoon, Director of Technology Innovation Policy, stated, "Strategic technologies such as AI are expected to rapidly reshape and monopolize the global market around a few leading players," and added, "Through Scale-Up TIPS, we will actively support companies to quickly respond to changes in the market and technology and expand globally, thereby creating opportunities for Korea to become a leading country in strategic technologies."
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