[Korean Startup Weekly News #142] NAVER and Furiosa AI Land Two of Korea’s Biggest AI Rounds – WOWTALE

Two of Korea’s largest AI-infrastructure bets landed in the same week. NAVER will raise $1 billion from NVIDIA to expand its AI factory business, and AI chipmaker Furiosa AI closed a $623 million Series D at a roughly $2.89 billion valuation — one of the largest funding rounds in Korean startup history. Mirae Asset also backed a U.S. biotech’s $350 million round abroad, seven more Korean startups raised funding at home, and the government rolled out four industrial strategies in a single week.

NAVER and Furiosa AI Land Two of Korea’s Biggest AI Rounds

NAVER’s $1B NVIDIA Deal and Furiosa AI’s $623M Round Anchor the Week

NAVER will raise $1 billion from NVIDIA through a third-party share allotment paid November 6, giving NVIDIA about a 4.8% stake and funding NAVER’s AI factory expansion. In the same week, AI chip startup Furiosa AI closed a $623 million Series D at a roughly $2.89 billion post-money valuation, backed by a consortium that includes Korea Development Bank, NAVER, and Kakao Investment. A listed internet giant taking outside capital from a chipmaker, and an AI chip startup raising one of the largest rounds in Korean history — different deal structures, but both bet on Korea owning more of its own AI compute stack. Separately, Doonamu & Partners invested in U.S. space data center startup Starcloud [KO], extending Korean capital’s reach into overseas AI infrastructure.

Latest Funding News

Notable investments and deals shaping Korea’s startup ecosystem.

Inha University Spinout Lotus Materials Raises $1.5M

from the Incheon Innovation Mother Fund’s fifth vehicle, to develop power-semiconductor bonding material.

AI Materials Startup NanoForge AI Raises $11M Seed

led by Mirae Asset Venture Investment, with Futureplay, Mashup Ventures, DSC Investment, and KDB also participating, to speed AI-driven materials discovery.

AIZ Entertainment Raises KRW 20B Series A

from Kakao Games and Krafton, led by former Kakao CEO Namgung Hoon, to build a chatbot game messenger.

Atomic Force Microscope Developer Multiscale Instrument Raises Undisclosed Funding

from Seoul Techno Holdings, for measurement equipment used in next-generation semiconductor fabrication.

Used-Luxury Platform Fapis Raises Funding

from Baemin founder Bongjin Kim, and opens a flagship store in Nonhyeon.

Ammonia Power Startup Amogy Gets $20M From Korea Eximbank

as lead investor in its ongoing $200M Series C, funding mass production of zero-carbon power modules.

JB Financial Group Forms $23M AI Fund

and makes its first investment in AI security startup CipherData.

Computer Vision Platform QBlack AI Raises Seed Funding

from Partners Lounge and Korea Investment Accelerator.

Korea Ecosystem & Trends

The rest of this week’s Korea startup news, in brief.

Government rolls out four industrial strategies in one week.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups unveiled a KRW 5 trillion+ “3X” smart-manufacturing strategy [KO] linking digital, AI, and robot transformation through 2030, and a separate KRW 600 billion climate-tech financing push [KO] targeting 1,000 climate-tech firms and 30 pre-unicorns. The Ministry of Health and Welfare announced a pharma-bio “frontier” program [KO] backing 200 companies with KRW 60 billion in investment and KRW 90 billion in guarantees by 2030, and the SME ministry also built a 538-company “new security” innovation candidate pool [KO] spanning AI, robotics, aerospace, drones, cybersecurity, and quantum.

SME exports hit a record third quarter, even as manufacturing and startup formation slip.

Korean SME exports reached $33.43B in Q3 [KO], up 8.8% year-on-year and led by beauty and semiconductors, for the best third quarter on record. The same report found small-manufacturer output down 4.0% and new business formation down 9.5% in August — though tech-sector startup formation alone rose 10.1%. The trade ministry separately named 188 K-export strategy products [KO] in beauty, fashion, lifestyle, and food to support overseas retail placement.

Korean startups keep pushing into Europe, Japan, and the U.S.

EdTech startup EduSync was selected for a Europe accelerator program [KO] run by Korea’s KODIT alongside HEC Paris and Station F. AI interior-design startup Archisketch was named a partner for SoftBank’s “Wonship” [KO] in Japan, and EdTech startup Edutem supplied an AI-based Korean-language platform to the University of Washington [KO].

Global Briefs

Selected headlines from the global startup ecosystem.

• WOWTALE Global Weekly #2

What We’re Seeing

• NAVER taking $1B from NVIDIA and Furiosa AI raising $623M in the same week put two of Korea’s largest AI-infrastructure bets side by side — one an incumbent selling a stake, the other a startup raising one of the biggest rounds in Korean history.
• Doonamu & Partners backing a U.S. space data center is this week’s clearest sign of Korean capital reaching into overseas AI infrastructure, rather than just overseas startups.
• The government rolled out four separate industrial strategies — manufacturing, climate tech, bio, and “new security” — in a single week, all multi-year plans rather than direct startup funding.
• Record SME exports and rising tech-sector startup formation came in the same report as falling manufacturing output and overall new business formation — a mixed signal, not a clean trend.

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