A stage was set to compete against the creative ideas and technical skills of prospective entrepreneurs who will lead the long run artificial intelligence (AI) industry.
Gwangju City (Mayor Kang Ki-jung) held the ‘K-Digital Challenge: AI Startup Entrepreneurship Competition’ from the nineteenth to the twenty first at COEX in Seoul to supply a foundation for entrepreneurship for aspiring AI entrepreneurs.
This competition was held as one in all the bogus intelligence-centered industrial convergence complex development projects jointly promoted by the Ministry of Science and ICT, Gwangju City, National IT Industry Promotion Agency, and Artificial Intelligence Industry Convergence Project Group.
On this 12 months’s ‘AI Startup Contest’, 64 teams of prospective startups participated, and the ultimate 10 teams competed through the preliminary round, most important round, and final round. .
A complete of KRW 750 million, starting from KRW 35 million to a maximum of KRW 200 million, can be provided to the ten final chosen teams to support the production of AI prototypes and services. It provides advantages comparable to consulting on deregulation of AI prototypes and services, linkage to startup camp occupancy, and use of knowledge centers and demonstration equipment.
On this final competition, Homi AI won the grand prize by presenting the ‘Real image-based video generation engine using bridge diffusion’ project. Datafly won the grand prize for the ‘Manufacturing process improvement solution through AI demand forecasting’ task, and Detector presented the ‘Solution to guard my image from deepfakes’ task, each winning the grand prize.
The grand prize winning team, Homi AI, continued its achievements by signing an investment memorandum of understanding for commercialization cooperation with Y&Watcher Honam Center, a world accelerator (AC).
As well as, through the competition process, we provided education on AI startups and commercialization, management support through matching with investors, and mentoring on law, finance, accounting, mental property rights, etc.
One participant from the preliminary startup team said, “Through the competition, we had a useful opportunity to complement the shortcomings of the business item and improve the business model through consultation,” and added, “We are going to proceed to strive to grow the corporate based on what we learned from this competition.” “I’ll do it,” he said.
This competition was held together with the ‘2024 Smart Tech Korea AI & Big Data Show’, and an AI data center promotion booth was arrange on the event venue, providing a chance to widely publicize the AI integrated complex development project domestically and internationally.
Kim Yong-seung, head of the AI Industry Lab, said, “This competition has laid the muse for the creative and revolutionary ideas and technological capabilities of aspiring entrepreneurs who will lead the long run AI industry to grow and advance further.” He added, “We are going to proceed to supply support to vitalize the AI startup ecosystem and grow revolutionary startups.”
Reporter Im Dae-jun ydj@aitimes.com
