AI retail tech company Deeping Source has attracted strategic investment from KDDI Open Innovation Fund 3 (operator: Global Brain), a corporate venture fund of Japanese telecommunications company KDDI.
The fund had already participated as a lead investor in Dipping Sauce’s Series A round in 2019. Through this follow-up investment, Dipping Sauce is expected to further accelerate its entry into the Japanese market and global business expansion.
KDDI provides services to individual customers under multi-brands such as 'au', 'UQ Mobile', and 'povo', focusing on 5G communications, and provides various services to corporate customers in Japan and overseas under the 'KDDI BUSINESS' brand. In addition, since 2012, it has operated the KDDI Open Innovation Fund to discover new businesses that will lead KDDI's future growth through investments in promising startups in fields such as AI and deep tech.
Kim Tae-hoon, CEO of Dipping Sauce, said, “We are honored to receive investment from a leading Japanese company like KDDI. Through this investment, we will accelerate the digital transformation of the Japanese retail industry and lay the foundation for expansion into the entire Asian market.”
Hong Joo-pyo, partner at Global Brain, said, “Unlike online, in the offline retail industry where there were many restrictions on data collection and utilization, ‘Deepening Source’s’ agentic AI technology that ▲protects privacy in real time while ▲proactively resolving in-store operational issues is gaining attention as a partner that can solve long-standing concerns of the industry. In fact, many companies are actively reviewing the introduction of this technology, and KDDI and Global Brain plan to spare no strategic support for Deepening Source’s global expansion.”
CEO Kim Tae-hoon emphasized, “Based on our successful experience in the Japanese market, we plan to more actively pursue expansion into global markets such as Southeast Asia and North America,” and “This will be an opportunity to leap forward as a global leader in the AI retail tech field.”
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