Samsung, LG and Bass Ventures Back Four Overseas Deals in One Week

Korean investors backed four separate overseas startups in a single week — a $150M robotics Series A, a $60M AI agent round, a $108M battery raise and a $90M seed — signaling what WOWTALE's Korean Startup Weekly #141 (Oct 19–25, 2026) calls a standing strategy rather than isolated deals.

Samsung Next wrote two of those checks itself. It joined physics-first robotics startup Eka Robotics' $150M Series A and AI agent cloud Daytona's $60M Series B. LG Technology Ventures entered sodium-ion battery maker Peak Energy's $108M Series B as a new investor. Bass Ventures was the sole Korean backer of Dream Labs' $90M seed round — a robot foundation model startup founded just three months ago by a Korean entrepreneur in San Francisco.

Four investors, four bets, same week. As WOWTALE put it: "Korean capital's overseas participation looks less like isolated deals and more like a standing strategy across several investors at once."

What does this change for Korean startups?

For practitioners, the signal is clear: the biggest Korea-relevant capital news this week happened offshore, not at home. Domestic rounds stayed modest, with the largest being a $49M pre-IPO raise. Founders building in robotics, AI agents or energy storage should note that Korean corporate venture arms are now hunting globally — and competing on Silicon Valley terms.

The domestic funding picture

The week's notable home-market rounds, per WOWTALE:

• The Hyoosik raised $49M in pre-IPO funding from TS Investment and VIP Asset Management, taking cumulative funding past $82M ahead of a planned listing.
• Trior, an ADC drug developer, raised $25M in Series C, bringing total funding to roughly $58M to advance its ADC platform and drug pipeline.
• NationA, an AI video startup, closed a $6.5M Series A to relaunch its integrated AI video production platform, pushing cumulative funding to about $9M.
• TraceWeave, an on-device AI startup, raised a $2.3M seed led by Mirae Asset Capital to develop Phase-TITAN, a model architecture built for long context and multi-step tasks within a fixed memory budget.
• AnyBridge, an AI inference infrastructure startup, raised seed funding and was selected for TIPS, the government program that attaches a matching grant.

A dozen-plus startups push into Asia

More than a dozen Korean startups expanded into China, Japan, Singapore and Southeast Asia in one week, with no single region dominating. Robotics education firm Lobai began technical validation with China's Linkerbot. Loai is building a smart manufacturing platform with Japan's Tokyo Trade Group. Digital-twin startup Angelswing signed an enterprise contract with Kajima's Singapore unit, and Vestella Lab is building a data-center patrol robot venture with China's Moonfact. 42Maru pushed into Japan at IT Week Autumn, while Gyeonggi's innovation center ran a roadshow with Microsoft that supported 10 startups' entry into Singapore.

Kakao moves on four fronts at once

Kakao executed in parallel what usually takes a quarter. It redesigned KakaoTalk channels with content-style channel homes, announced a 300B-won (roughly $220M) buyback and cancellation following its corporate split, open-sourced a vision encoder, and unveiled an AI parking vision system through Kakao Mobility that cuts exit times by up to 20%.

Local governments keep building venture infrastructure

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups formed its first cross-region fund at roughly $98.5M combined for Daegu and Gyeongbuk, and launched its second "Challenge for All" program with 10,000 founders clearing the first round. Busan's innovation center sourced 103 startups through its "Changup-BuS" program and directly invested in 17. The ministry also named six more "startup cities" for roughly $45.5M in support over four years — about $7.6M per city.

The takeaway for operators: while Seoul's bureaucrats pour money into regional infrastructure, the sharpest Korean capital is already looking abroad. If the four-deal week becomes a pattern, Korean founders will increasingly find their compatriot investors sitting across the table in San Francisco rather than in Gangnam.