AI inference platform company FriendliAI (CEO Byung-gon Jeon) announced on the 29th that it has completed raising $20 million in a Seed Extension round of investment.
This round was led by Capstone Partners, with KB Securities participating as a follow-on investor. Silicon Valley-based Sierra Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and the Korea Development Bank (KDB) also joined as new investors.
The investment was driven by the rapid growth of the inference market, driven by the widespread commercialization of AI services. FriendlyAI is strengthening its position in this market by providing high-performance, high-efficiency inference solutions to companies operating large-scale AI models.
Friendly AI has developed a platform focused on solving challenges such as high infrastructure costs, slow inference speeds, and operational complexity. Specifically, its inference solution simultaneously delivers fast response times and GPU cost savings (up to 50% or more), supporting the stable operation of multimodal and language model-based AI services.
Another strength is that it provides a container-based deployment method that can be used even in air-gap environments, allowing the product to be utilized even in in-house environments that require sensitive information.
“As AI technology moves beyond the experimental stage and into actual operational environments, this investment will serve as the foundation for Friendly AI to fully expand its market opportunities,” said Jeon Byeong-gon, CEO of Friendly AI. “Through partnerships with global and domestic investors, we will strengthen our technological competitiveness and continue to expand customer value.”
Capstone Partners Partner Song Eun-kang said, “Considering that a significant portion of AI model operating costs occur at the inference stage, Friendly AI’s technological prowess is becoming a key factor in accelerating corporate AI adoption,” adding, “We are very honored to be leading this investment round.”
Friendly AI plans to use this investment to strengthen its sales and marketing capabilities, expand its customer support infrastructure, and focus on product development. It will also expand collaborations and partnerships with major technology companies.
In fact, Friendly AI recently signed a strategic partnership with LG AI Research Institute and was selected as the sole service provider to offer LG's large-scale language model, "EXAONE," in API format. Furthermore, various companies, including Scatter Lab, operator of the AI character chat platform "Zeta," and Upstage, developer of the language model "SOLAR," are adopting the Friendly AI platform to simultaneously improve cost efficiency and performance.
“FriendlyAI is well-practicing the foundational technologies needed to introduce next-generation AI through scalable and efficient AI infrastructure,” said Ben Yu, partner at Sierra Ventures. “The continued market growth demonstrates that there is a huge demand for this technology.”
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