LG Group is moving to expand the startup ecosystem for young people.
LG Group said on the 23rd that it hosted Superstart Day 2026, a startup discovery and incubation event, at LG Science Park in Magok, Seoul. At the event, Chairman Koo Kwang-mo of LG Group brought together in one place a range of innovative startup technologies in ABC (AI, bio, cleantech), which he has tagged as LG Group's future businesses, as well as robotics, the space industry and data centers.
Superstart Day is a startup incubation and support program that began in 2018 with the launch of LG Group's research and development (R&D) innovation hub, LG Science Park in Magok. Promising startups present their results to LG affiliates, institutions and investors, using it as a springboard to expand opportunities for collaboration and investment. It has been evolving into a venue for technology exchange that promotes collaboration in the industry, with 30 countries and 30,000 global attendees to date.
This year's event brought together 30 of LG's technology executives to discover and scout innovative technologies. Present were Kwon Bong-seok, COO of LG Corp., and Jeong Su-heon, head of LG Science Park (who also serves as chair of the LG Technology Council), as well as chief technology officers (CTOs) from eight major affiliates. Public institutions, venture capital (VC), accelerators (AC) and universities also attended to explore the business viability and scalability of the latest technologies.
This Superstart Day featured 41 startups discovered with deep-tech investment and incubation partner institutions, which presented and exhibited their core technologies. In particular, the number of innovative startups in the fast-growing robotics field increased this year.
A variety of innovative technologies in the ABC fields, which Koo has tagged as future businesses, were also unveiled. Fresh&Go, which started as an in-house venture at LG Electronics and was spun off, drew attention by showcasing a high-efficiency cooling solution based on foldable vacuum insulation (FVI) and modular cold storage technologies that can be widely applied to small artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, smart farms and more. LabIncube, selected last year by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups as a so-called "baby unicorn," drew notice by applying carbon-reduction materials such as MOF (Metal-Organic Framework), which won the '25 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, to air purifiers for the first time in the world. A baby unicorn refers to an innovative company valued at less than 100 billion won.
For this year's Superstart Day, LG created a new Rookie program for university startup teams, providing a stage for young entrepreneurs to unveil their ideas and expand investment attraction and business cooperation.
Each university startup team participating in this program held a Pitching Contest on stage to attract investment and partnerships, and promoted their technologies and business models through related exhibits and business meetings. Three teams selected by combining on-site audience votes and judges' scores—Pinta AI, Motomind and ForBody—will receive prize money, exemption from the initial startup package documents from the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, and opportunities to collaborate with LG affiliates. They will also receive benefits from the Superstart Incubator, which provides office space, business proof-of-concept expense support and employee-level welfare at LG.
LG Group will continue growth support such as LG technology mentoring and on-site tours for all university startup teams participating in the event, regardless of final selection. It also plans to further expand the scale of the Rookie program starting next year to serve as a catalyst for spreading youth entrepreneurship.
Jeong Su-heon, head of LG Science Park, said, "LG Group is advancing future technologies based on Winning Tech, an R&D strategy to create new customer value," adding, "Through Superstart Day, LG's open-innovation festival, we will strengthen cooperation with startups to build Winning Tech together, and through the newly launched Rookie program, we will identify and nurture innovative youth startups early to build LG's differentiated innovation ecosystem."
Meanwhile, the government declared a National Startup Era in January and launched the Startup for All Project on the 26th of last month. At a Cabinet meeting on the 31st of last month, it allocated a total of 1.9 trillion won to support youth startups and jobs. Of this, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups allocated 150 billion won to the Innovation Startup Commercialization Fund, which provides capital to the Youth Startup Fund for companies less than three years old.