Crit Ventures USA Invests in AI Content Startup AboveTech

Crit Ventures' US branch, Crit Ventures USA, announced on July 15 that it has made a seed investment in AboveTech, an artificial intelligence (AI) content startup. This funding round was led by CEO Oh Jongwook, who previously made early-stage investments in Danggeun Market, Jarvis, and DeepX before joining Crit Ventures. GD Ventures and the SNU Startup Network Angel Club also participated jointly.

AboveTech has successively launched AI-based chatbot platforms for fortune-telling, tarot, and counseling called 'Zendi,' as well as a memorial service called 'dearever' that uses AI to recreate pets and deceased loved ones. In particular, Zendi, which combines AI chatbots and content, demonstrated its production capabilities and profitability by achieving monthly sales of 100 million KRW within six months of launch.

In the second half of this year, AboveTech is also preparing to launch a next-generation interactive character chat service called 'IF.' IF is an immersive AI social content platform where users can become the main characters in a fictional universe and influence the flow of the content. Going beyond traditional one-way chatbots, IF offers an experience where users can actively shape narratives through realistic interactions such as changes in relationships with characters, emotional dynamics, social networking service (SNS) messages, and news reports.

Based on this investment, AboveTech plans to further advance the development of IF and actively carry out marketing targeting global users.

Choi Juwon, CEO of AboveTech, stated, "Korea is the best in the world at creating content, but I believe there is still a long way to go in platform competition. Our goal is to build a global top-tier content platform like Netflix, based on K-AI content."

Oh Jongwook, CEO of Crit Ventures USA, commented, "AboveTech is a team that combines creativity and execution, and I believe they have a high potential to lead the market in the new field of interactive content. I expect them to become a key player driving content innovation centered on user experience."