On the 1st, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced the final selection of 15 pre-unicorn corporations that will lead the global market.
The pre-unicorn special guarantee from the Ministry of SMEs and Startups is a program that supports scale-up funding of up to 20 billion won to cultivate global unicorn corporations, with 79 corporations applying this year, yielding a competition rate of 5.3 to 1. Many corporations with excellent innovation and growth potential were selected, showing an average revenue of 23.3 billion won, 74 employees, 35.2 billion won in investment attraction, and a corporate value of 113.4 billion won.
Travel Wallet, which was selected this time, is a global payment platform corporation that offers foreign payment, currency exchange, and remittance services, recognized for its innovation and growth potential in resolving inconveniences such as high fees and long processing times associated with traditional banks.
Liner, which provides AI search and deep research services, ranked first in the SimpleQA benchmark evaluating the reliability of AI models, earning recognition for its innovation. In addition, it is expanding its market share overseas by targeting U.S. college campuses, raising expectations for growth as a global AI corporation.
Starting this year, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups introduced a new 'performance-based guarantee system,' allowing corporations to receive additional guarantees without separate assessments upon achieving certain results in 'follow-up investment' and 'revenue,' thereby providing convenience and motivating further investment and revenue growth.
The Ministry of SMEs and Startups has supported special guarantees amounting to 797.2 billion won by selecting 126 pre-unicorn corporations from 2019 to 2024 under the pre-unicorn project.
As a result of measuring the performance of the 126 selected corporations as of the end of 2024, revenue increased by 174% and the number of employees by 44.7% compared to the time of selection, with 90 corporations attracting follow-up investments of 5.2 trillion won. Notably, eight corporations achieved unicorn status, and 13 corporations were listed on the KOSDAQ market.
Minister Han Seong-suk said, 'The pre-unicorn special guarantee program has established itself as a representative scale-up program, achieving numerous successes in initial public offerings (IPOs) and the growth of unicorn corporations,' adding, 'We will do our best to ensure that pre-unicorn corporations become key players in our country's economic growth.'