Third-quarter results for major artificial intelligence (AI) corporations listed on the KOSDAQ market were mixed. Some corporations showed growth on the back of large project wins and expansion in the data business, while not a few saw profitability worsen due to research and development (R&D) and business expansion expense burdens. Despite the "AI boom," assessments say the sorting of winners and losers has begun in earnest as performance diverges by corporation.
According to the Financial Supervisory Service's electronic disclosure system on the 19th, AI software specialist Konan Technology posted third-quarter sales of 16.4 billion won and an operating loss of 1.5 billion won. Sales surged 351% from a year earlier, while the operating loss decreased 68%. As a result, cumulative sales for the third quarter came to 23.9 billion won, up 91.5% from the same period a year earlier (12.4 billion won), and the operating loss narrowed 35.2% year over year.
Konan Technology said recent wins in large-scale large language model (LLM) project businesses drove results. The company's cumulative LLM sales this year were 5.7 billion won, reflecting performance in build-outs for the power generation and medical sectors, including Korea Southern Power (3.8 billion won) and Hallym University Medical Center (1 billion won). Following Korea Southern Power, the company consecutively won LLM build-out projects for the three power generators, including Korea Western Power and Korea East-West Power, as well as in the judicial and public sectors such as the Supreme Court and Gyeonggi Provincial Government. In finance, it also carried out proof of concept (PoC) work for HANWHA GENERAL INSURANCE and KB Securities.
Flitto recorded third-quarter sales of 11.7 billion won and operating profit of 2.8 billion won, up 71% and 130%, respectively, from a year earlier. This is the largest quarterly performance since the company's founding. The company said multiple large project wins drove the sales increase. Flitto is diversifying data types, including voice and image, based on expanded sales of AI training language data and strengthened data quality competitiveness. It also supplies AI interpretation and translation solutions to global corporations and events at home and abroad.
WISEnut posted third-quarter sales of 8.8 billion won and operating profit of 1.1 billion won. Sales rose 14% from a year earlier, while operating profit surged 14-fold. This was thanks to wins in Generative AI projects in the public and financial institutional sectors. WISEnut recently built public AI agents at a total of eight institutions and corporations, including the Korea Road Traffic Authority (KOROAD), the Ministry of Personnel Management, and the Gyeonggi Provincial Government. Crowdworks recorded third-quarter sales of 2.4 billion won and an operating loss of 3 billion won. Sales grew 5.5% year over year, and the size of the deficit decreased 20.7%. The company said it recently won a project to evaluate AI agent performance for the major insurer Meritz Fire & Marine Insurance.
By contrast, some listed AI corporations saw profitability deteriorate due to expense burdens. Saltlux posted third-quarter sales of 9.1 billion won and an operating loss of 2.6 billion won. Sales fell 35.7% from a year earlier, and operating profit swung to a loss. Saltlux's performance decline is analyzed as stemming from failures to win large-scale projects. The corporation had maintained stable results last year with service sales such as customized development and consulting for corporations and institutions, but this year it failed one after another in major government projects, including the national AI foundation model consortium and specialized AI model development projects, leading to weaker results.
ESTsoft maintained third-quarter sales of 24.9 billion won, similar to a year earlier. However, the operating loss widened to 4.5 billion won. The company explained that the loss expanded due to increased global advertising and publicity expense and materials and supplies costs to grow the AI software (SW) business. It said investments are continuing, including strengthening the foundation for aggressive global marketing of PERSO AI and advance purchases for expansion of the PERSO AI human kiosk business.
As such, third-quarter results for AI-listed corporations this year diverged based on project wins centered on the public sector and large corporations. Competition for large AI projects is fierce, but the corporations capable of securing them are limited. In particular, corporations with stable order backlogs in businesses such as data, medical, and B2B specialized solutions are showing growth, while those whose platform transitions are delayed or whose sales rely heavily on large clients are seeing heightened earnings volatility.
Industry watchers projected that while KOSDAQ AI-listed corporations will inevitably face difficulties for the time being, there is potential for improvement over the long term. They said AI corporations will continue to increase research and development expenditure, but it will be difficult to generate recurring revenue through building software as a service (SaaS) models. However, once the market enters a mature phase, competition among the numerous current players will ease, and corporations with differentiated technology and stable service models will survive.
An AI industry official said, "In the end, wins in public corporation projects determine results, and right now most corporations are at a stage where they are shouldering initial investment expense for AI transformation, so expense inevitably swells," adding, "But once the market begins to stabilize, corporations that have all three—technology, data, and customer references—will continue to show growth."