ZETIC.ai, a Korean startup specializing in the on-device transition of B2B AI services, has secured seed funding from Korea Investment Accelerator and TheVentures. The company has developed ZETIC.Melange, a server-less AI solution that allows AI models to run directly on mobile devices without the need for expensive GPU servers.

Developers can easily integrate AI models into their mobile applications using Melange. When customers provide their AI models and data to ZETIC.ai, the company optimizes these models and converts them into software libraries tailored for chips on Android or iOS devices. This process eliminates server costs by replacing all server operations in the existing application with internal library operations.

Additionally, Melange maximizes AI model performance by leveraging the NPUs (Neural Processing Units) of various SoCs (System on a Chip). It enhances the performance of AI-specific chips, such as Qualcomm chips in Android devices and Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. This approach not only reduces costs but also improves processing speeds on mobile devices and enhances data security, thereby maximizing user privacy. By transitioning AI services to on-device AI, it addresses potential bottlenecks and various exceptions and errors associated with cloud servers, thereby improving the stability of AI services.

ZETIC.ai plans to use the funds to hire Android and iOS-based service developers and AI developers, further enhance their product, and prepare for global market expansion.

Yeonseok Kim, CEO of ZETIC.ai, provided an example of an alpha test customer, saying, “A domestic startup providing voice recognition AI services is currently spending 10 million KRW per month on cloud costs. As the number of users increases, the server costs multiply several times, causing concerns about the pace of growth. By transitioning cloud AI services to on-device AI services, ZETIC.ai aims to eliminate all cloud AI server costs, empowering AI service providers to freely accelerate the development of their AI services.”