Korean AI Startup Twelve Labs Attracts $10 Million Investment from Tech Giants
Korean AI development firm Twelve Labs, which specializes in Video Understanding, announced on the 26th that it has secured a strategic investment of approximately $10 million (about 14 billion KRW) from NVIDIA, Intel, Samsung Next, and Korean Investment Partners. This marks the first time NVIDIA has invested in a Korean AI startup.
Established in 2021, Twelve Labs leverages multimodal neural networks to create large AI models tailored for video-related applications. The company excels in video search, classification, and generation, and is the exclusive provider of a global Video Language Model (VLM) that uses multimodal neural networks to handle videos professionally.
While global tech giants focus on text and image fields, Twelve Labs stands out in the industry due to its exceptional expertise in video-related tasks. Last year, the company attracted seed investments from prominent global venture capitalists, such as Index Ventures, and garnered attention by bringing in renowned AI experts like Professor Fei-Fei Li from Stanford University and Eddan Gomez, CEO of Cohere, a key competitor to OpenAI.
Recent accolades include being consecutively listed among the “Top 50 AI Companies in the World” and recognized as a “Top Promising AI Startup” by global media outlets like CB Insights and Business Insider. This has positioned Twelve Labs alongside global tech giants like OpenAI, Hugging Face, and Adapt.
With this investment, Twelve Labs plans to strengthen its technical leadership by forming close partnerships with leading global semiconductor suppliers and firmly establishing itself as a key player in the global market. Already, the company has laid the foundation by securing thousands of the latest AI training NVIDIA A100 and H100 Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) through a substantial cloud partnership with Oracle.
NVIDIA, Intel, Samsung Next, and Korean Investment Partners are said to have invested in Twelve Labs, recognizing its technological capabilities and dominant position in the market. Mohamed Siddeek, Head of NVentures at NVIDIA, praised Twelve Labs’ technical achievements, stating, “Anyone who understands the complexity of video summarization will highly appreciate Twelve Labs’ technical accomplishments. We will continue our collaboration with Twelve Labs on various projects in the future.”
Lee Jae-seong, CEO of Twelve Labs, expressed, “Through this investment partnership, we will redouble our efforts in technology investment and talent recruitment, aligning with our goal to become the world’s top multimodal company. We are not only considering simple investment partnerships but also look ahead to product partnerships, sparing no effort to support the commercialization of Twelve Labs’ video understanding models.”
[Korean Visual AI Startups News]
- ROBOS Secures KRW 7 Billion for Vision AI Slaughterhouse Robots in Series A Funding
- Visual AI startup mAy-I raises 6 billion won in Series A funding
- Saige Research, a Korean AI Startup for Manufacturing Quality Control, Raises KRW 15.5 Billion in Series B
- Playtag, a vision-based AI behavior analysis startup, raises 4 billion KRW in pre-Series A funding
- Defect Scanner Targets Korean Market with AI-Powered No-Code Product Defect Detection Solution
- MotionsCloud utilizes AI to simplify and automate the process of determining vehicle damage
