Mashup Ventures Makes Seed Investment in AR Merchandise Platform "Holoceive"

Holoceive, a company developing an artificial intelligence (AI)-based augmented reality (AR) merchandise platform, announced on the 24th that it has secured seed investment from Mashup Ventures.

Holoceive is the company that introduced Effectmate, created in partnership with Animate, Japan's largest distributor, which overlays AR content onto physical merchandise. This service filters out counterfeit products and protects intellectual property (IP) by analyzing the characteristics of physical merchandise using AI technology. Its strength lies in expanding the scope of content by adding interactive experiences to static merchandise.

Actual use of HoloParts, a platform that enables anyone to easily create augmented reality (AR) merchandise.

On the recommendation of Mashup Ventures, which made this investment, Holoceive was also selected for the TIPS (Tech Incubator Program for Startup) program run by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups. Through this, the company has gained recognition for its technological capabilities and secured up to 500 million won in research and development funding. In fact, AR acrylic stands launched in Japan in October last year proved their marketability, with the initial production run selling out completely.

The founding team combines both technological expertise and deep understanding of the local market. Chief Executive Officer Oh Byungil is a specialist who developed XR vision software at Samsung Electronics, while Chief Executive Officer Joo Youngjin is a business expert who spent over 10 years working as a manga platform director in Japan.

Holoceive plans to launch the HoloParts platform next month, enabling individual creators to easily produce AR merchandise. The company aims to build an ecosystem that goes beyond business-to-business (B2B) transactions to include individual users.

Holoceive Chief Executive Officers Oh Byungil and Joo Youngjin said, “Following this investment, we plan to further advance our vision AI technology to enhance merchandise recognition accuracy and content quality, and to make a full-fledged push into the Japanese market,” adding, “Along with platform expansion, we will also broaden our business into the global subculture market.”

Lee Seungkuk, Partner at Mashup Ventures who led the investment, said, “Holoceive is a team that is innovating the limitations of the existing merchandise market by solving the issues of merchandise duplication and counterfeiting and creating high added value through premium content,” and added, “We highly valued the fact that within just one year of its founding, the company has proven both its technological capabilities and product competitiveness in the Japanese market, and we expect it to grow into the leading platform in the global AR merchandise market.”