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A total of 14 companies, including Marina Chain and RunKoreanInKorean, have survived the regional preliminaries to select Korean startups for collaboration with the U.S. company 'OpenAI'.

On the 15th, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced, "A matching event between OpenAI and domestic startups was held for two days on the 14th and 15th at the Swiss Grand Hotel in Seoul, with the participation of 42 startups, OpenAI executives, and AI experts."

This event was held to vitalize the domestic AI business ecosystem through collaboration between OpenAI and domestic startups, and to enhance the global expansion and technological development capabilities of promising AI-related startups. It also served as a domestic preliminary to select companies to collaborate with OpenAI.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups conducted an open recruitment in two areas - 'API utilization' and 'general collaboration' - for two weeks from November 3 to 17, selecting 220 companies.

On the first day of the event, December 14, 42 companies that passed the document evaluation by OpenAI employees out of 220 startups that applied for collaboration conducted presentation evaluations. On the second day, December 15, the results of selecting 14 startups advancing to the finals out of the 42 startups were announced.

In the API utilization category, 9 companies were selected: Marina Chain, Cliownt, Next Payments, DK Medinfo, HiLocal, Waddle, Turing, Liner Brain, and WeRazer. In the general collaboration category, 5 companies were chosen: RunKoreanInKorean, Asleep, Furiosa AI, NineWatt, and BOS Semiconductor.

The 14 startups selected on this day will advance to the finals to be held in the United States in the first half of next year. OpenAI plans to make the final selection of startups to collaborate with among the companies participating in the finals.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups plans to provide opportunities for the 14 startups advancing to the finals to visit OpenAI headquarters in Silicon Valley, USA, and meet with developers next year. Particularly, if selected as OpenAI's final collaboration company, they plan to support commercialization funds. OpenAI has promised to support AI-related services, including priority provision of API credits for generative AI models and one-on-one technical mentoring, for the final collaboration companies.

Lim Jung-wook, Director of the Startup and Venture Innovation Office at the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, said, "I am very pleased that the event was held as scheduled thanks to OpenAI's high interest in Korean startups and the startups' active willingness to collaborate. The Ministry of SMEs and Startups will continue to strive to ensure that these 14 selected startups succeed in final collaboration with OpenAI and achieve global expansion and high growth based on this in the future."

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