We will become the Dow Jones of the arts, allowing artists worldwide to freely communicate and receive investment from individuals and institutions. Through this, we aim to innovate the global art ecosystem, which struggles to generate revenue.
This is the ambition expressed by Cho Young-rin, CEO of Evertreasure. Evertreasure is a startup that develops and operates the artificial intelligence (AI)-based global artist investment platform "Yetu." CEO Cho founded the company in April 2023.
Cho's background is impressive. Having worked as a foreign exchange dealer and fund manager at Bank of China, he later handled FX margin trading in the United States. After returning to Korea and finishing law school, he became a lawyer and served as the chief strategy officer and legal team leader at 8 Percent, a domestic crowdfunding startup. Subsequently, Cho moved to the entertainment sector, where he was the head of the global strategy division at Galaxy Corporation, known for representing singer G-Dragon.
Regarding the background of Evertreasure's founding, Cho mentioned the limitations of the current art market, where generating revenue through artwork sales is challenging.
He said, "To sell artwork, one must build a reputation as an artist, but the structural limitations of the current art market make it difficult to establish that reputation due to the lack of revenue." He emphasized, "I want to innovate this art ecosystem."
Evertreasure officially launched the art investment platform "Yetu" last July. Fans and investors can directly communicate with global artists and invest in their artistic activities and works. This supports artists while allowing individuals to become shareholders.
Through this, investors can gain revenue as the artist's works sell or as performance revenues generate profits proportional to their investment. The platform applies AI technology to analyze data on the artist's activities and provide expected rates of return.
Evertreasure has also developed and implemented a "securities-type token trading and management system." Considering the changes in revenue from the artists' works, this technology allows for simulating future revenues and facilitating the issuance of securities-type tokens and fractional investments.
In the future, Evertreasure plans to create a credit evaluation model based on artists' activity data and provide them with financing solutions. Long-term, they aim to establish a specialized internet bank for artists.
Currently, over 1,000 artists and over 1,000 investors, both domestically and internationally, are using Yetu. According to CEO Cho, prior to the official launch of Yetu, an MVP (minimum viable product) test conducted last August recorded a 20% return on investment.
Evertreasure plans to establish a Japanese subsidiary in the first half of next year, beginning its expansion into Europe, including the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. Cho said, "We will innovatively transform the previously exclusive art ecosystem both domestically and globally, providing dreams for artists and opportunities for revenue generation for investors."