Liner, an artificial intelligence (AI) agent startup, said on the 25th that it secured 50 billion won in Series C funding.
The funding round comes about 1 year and 10 months after the previous round, bringing Liner's cumulative investment to about 94 billion won.
LB Investment led the round, and existing shareholders including Atinum Investment and CJ Investment joined as follow-on investors. KDB Korea Development Bank, Helios Private Equity, KB Securities, Daishin Securities, and STIC Ventures also joined as new investors.
Liner plans to concentrate the funds raised this time on research and development (R&D) to cement its technological edge. It will prioritize resources for advancing core technologies and expanding infrastructure to widen its lead over competitors in search and agent fields, while also allocating resources evenly to recruit top talent and expand marketing and business.
In particular, it will diversify the business model of its core B2C (business-to-consumer) service and localize agent technologies proven overseas for Korea to broaden the reach of the "Everyone's AI" service that the public can feel in daily life. It will further expand into the domestic and overseas corporate AX (AI transformation) markets.
Liner currently has 14 million users in more than 220 countries, including the United States, Europe, India, and Southeast Asia. As of late July this year, it ranked 30th in Similarweb's global AI service traffic rankings, ahead of Perplexity (31st), Mistral AI (32nd), and Glean (35th). Among Korean AI startups, it was the only one to be listed in the web services category of the "Top 100 consumer generative AI apps" selected by venture capital firm a16z for four consecutive times since 2024.
Based on its proprietary agent technologies, Liner has successively introduced the academic-focused "Liner Scholar," the corporate "Liner Lite," and the investment market analysis "Liner Finance."
Park Ki-ho, CEO of LB Investment, said, "Liner has unparalleled technological prowess in AI search and agents, where information accuracy is key," explaining that the firm proceeded with the investment after highly evaluating its growth potential.
Kim Jin-woo, CEO of Liner, said, "This fundraising is a strategic move to secure the technology infrastructure and talent that will ensure the reliability that is core to AI agents."