This article was displayed on the ChosunBiz MoneyMove (MM) site at 3:45 p.m. on Aug. 5, 2026.
Artificial intelligence (AI) agent service startup Liner has moved to raise a large round of funding. It is targeting a 50 billion won investment at a pre-money valuation of 250 billion won. Existing investors including Atinum Investment and KB Investment are understood to be reviewing follow-on participation.
According to the venture capital (VC) industry on the 11th, Liner recently finalized plans for a Series C round and began sounding out demand from financial investors (FI). It comes about two years after it raised 27 billion won in a Series B round in Oct. 2024 from Atinum Investment, Intervest and others.
Liner began in 2015 as a developer of a so-called "highlighting" browser extension that lets users mark key points directly on the web and extract only useful information. It then expanded its business from a personalized search service using highlight data to AI search services and agents.
Liner's AI agent service "Liner" is seen as differentiated from other AI agent services for its reliability. In particular, it collects the latest information on the web in real time and provides sources for every sentence in the output, and it even outperformed ChatGPT in the SimpleQA (answer accuracy) benchmark.
Investor interest is said to be strong. Backed by its ability to gather and analyze materials without answer errors, it has already secured more than 13 million users, which is considered a strength. Notably, by targeting global markets such as North America early on, more than 90% of its total users are said to be overseas, including in the United States.
Liner's service expansion is also cited as a strength. Beyond Liner AI Search, which helps with everyday information discovery and checking basic concepts, it has successively released "Liner Scholar," tailored for academic research, and "Liner Write," optimized for document work. Most recently, it unveiled "Liner Finance" for investment.
Its valuation after the funding is projected to reach 300 billion won. Atinum Investment, which joined Liner's Series B round in Oct. 2024, and KB Investment, which became a shareholder in 2022, are understood to be reviewing additional investment. The pre-money valuation is said to be 250 billion won.
A VC industry official said, "Liner is gaining popularity as a service that earns trust by providing credible sources, and it is already considered to rank among web-based AI services," adding, "Buoyed by existing investors' reviews for follow-on participation, the mood suggests no difficulty in raising 50 billion won."