The Ministry of SMEs and Startups (MSS) on the 5th announced the corporations selected for the "Top 50 outstanding SME R&D achievements 2025." An awards and outcomes-sharing event for the selected corporations will be held on the 27th at the President Hotel in Seoul.
The "Top 50 outstanding SME R&D achievements" is a program carried out annually since 2023 to discover and promote small and medium-sized enterprises that successfully completed Ministry of SMEs and Startups (MSS) R&D support projects over the past five years and produced outstanding outcomes. This year, a total of 360 corporations applied, recording a competition ratio of 7.2 to 1.
The 50 corporations selected this year are: ▲30 corporations with outstanding commercialization outcomes in technology development projects ▲10 corporations that secured global-level technological prowess in strategic technology fields ▲5 corporations that overcame management crises and succeeded in a new attempt ▲5 corporations that contributed to improving public services, such as easing social inequality.
The selected corporations will receive the Minister's commendation along with a variety of incentives. Through Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK) and Hana Bank, the dedicated banks for SME R&D funds, they will be given opportunities to receive low-interest loan support and to participate in dedicated investment support programs. They will also receive support to participate in global exhibitions such as CES to enter overseas markets, placement in a dedicated recruitment section, preferential treatment when participating in follow-up R&D projects, and benefits such as producing and promoting a collection of best practices.
In the commercialization category this year, Pantalux, which developed circuit technology that improves display luminance uniformity and power efficiency, was named the representative selected corporation. Through its technology development project, Pantalux achieved cumulative sales of 48.1 billion won and exports of 18 billion won, and is also moving to enter overseas markets including Europe and the United States.
In the strategic technology field, Pinotbio, which developed optimized linker technology for manufacturing antibody-drug conjugates (ADC), was selected. Based on this technology, Pinotbio attracted 11 billion won in investment and generated 2.1 billion won in royalty revenue.
In the limitation and new-attempt category, Saesol Tech made the list. Although it once faced the risk of closure due to the suspension of feature phone development, it developed autonomous driving communication security terminal software and servers through R&D support, raising sales from 430 million won in 2022 to 2.37 billion won in 2024.
In the public innovation field, Argosdyne, which developed a fixed-station-based unmanned automatic operation system capable of performing disaster, security, and forest monitoring without drone pilot intervention, was selected. The technology is assessed to improve drone landing accuracy and achieve station miniaturization, expanding the potential for use on moving platforms such as vehicles and ships.