NAVER D2SF Makes New Investments in AI Startups Bandal AI and SynapseAI

Token-Level Licensing Platform "Bandal AI"
AI Model Orchestration Engine "SynapseAI"

NAVER D2SF announced on February 5 that it has made new investments in artificial intelligence (AI) startups Bandal AI and SynapseAI. The two companies are early-stage startups targeting structural changes in the AI ecosystem, in the areas of content licensing and AI workflow automation respectively, and NAVER D2SF focused on their technological approaches and market scalability.

Bandal AI has developed Cashmere, a premium content licensing platform tailored for the AI era. Cashmere connects global content publishers with AI companies, enabling publishers to protect their intellectual property (IP) while creating new revenue models, and helping AI companies legally utilize high-quality data to improve the performance of their search services and proprietary large language models (LLMs). In particular, its differentiation lies in OmniPub, a content format optimized for AI usage environments, which integrates token-level access control, permission settings, usage tracking, and revenue settlement into a single structure.

Bandal AI, founded last year, is rapidly building trust within the industry around a co-founding team with experience in launching content platforms. It has already formed partnerships with global publishers such as John Wiley & Sons and Harvard Business Publishing, and is also working with AI companies including Perplexity. In addition to NAVER D2SF, Reach Capital and Ingram Content Group also participated in this seed round.

SynapseAI has set “intelligence mapping,” which automatically designs optimal workflows by combining various AI models according to purpose, cost, and performance, as its core vision. Cnaps Studio, launched early this year, supports more than 50 AI models based on text and images, and is drawing attention mainly in the e-commerce, entertainment, and content industries. The company updates the latest AI models every two weeks and plans to expand its coverage into multimodal domains such as voice, video, and 3D.

SynapseAI, founded last year, is composed of a team that includes talent from Nvidia, Google Research, and global gaming companies. This investment is its first institutional funding since its founding, with NAVER D2SF leading the round and Bluepoint, Laguna Investment, and the Joyakdol Fund participating as co-investors.

Yang Sanghwan, Head of NAVER D2SF Center, said, "Cashmere has created a structure that converts premium content into AI-native data, while SynapseAI is building an intelligence map that enables optimal connections and combinations between AI systems," adding, "NAVER D2SF will continue to discover entrepreneurs who are setting new standards in the evolving AI environment and support their growth."