The Ministry of SMEs and Startups (Minister Oh Young-joo, hereinafter referred to as the Ministry of SMEs and Startups) announced on the 9th that it will comprehensively announce the '2025 Scale-up Tips Enterprise Support Plan', a private-sector-led R&D program that supports challenges, innovations, and scale-ups of promising technology-intensive SMEs, reflecting the first supplementary budget for 2025.
Scale-up Tips is a project in which the government provides up to KRW 1.5 billion in R&D support for three years to small and medium-sized venture companies in the full-scale growth stage by attracting an investment of KRW 1 billion or more from the operating company, and provides up to KRW 2 billion in funds by investing equity from the mother fund to companies that have created results such as attracting follow-up investment.
On April 7, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced a support plan for 102 projects. This announcement is an integrated support plan for 176 2025 Scale-up TIPS R&D projects, including the existing support plan, 50 projects added through the supplementary budget, and 24 global tracks. The details are as follows.
◆ Scale-up Tips (General) Expanding new tasks and focusing on AI
First, in order to respond to rapid technological and market changes in the AI field, the number of new Scale-up Tips (general type) projects was expanded from 102 to 152 through the first supplementary budget for 2025.
AI is attracting attention as a strategic technology that will change the paradigm of the economy and industry as a whole. As the global competition for technological hegemony is in full swing, it is urgent to quickly discover promising technology companies and secure innovative AI technology.
The Ministry of SMEs and Startups plans to maximize performance by quickly discovering promising companies with high potential for performance creation through close cooperation with the private sector and actively supporting R&D to achieve the goals of the supplementary budget.
Scaleup Tips has been steadily increasing its support for the AI field in response to technological demands over the past three years, and has also been faithfully building a foundation for public-private cooperation to make a first-class AI country by expanding the number of operators with related expertise, so excellent results are expected.
In particular, through the specialized operation system to be introduced from 2025, the discovery and investment in promising AI companies and close support for R&D are expected to proceed at a faster pace.
◆ Scale-up Tips (Global) 24 new tasks
Next, a global track was created to provide up to 1.5 billion won in R&D funding over three years to focus on supporting R&D of companies aiming to expand overseas.
The conditions of attracting more than 1 billion won in upfront investment from the Scaleup Tips operator are the same, but in order to verify global expansion capabilities, ▲ companies must have attracted more than 1 million dollars in cumulative investment from overseas VCs, etc., ▲ have more than 500,000 dollars in cumulative overseas sales over the past 3 years, or ▲ have a local activity base such as an overseas office or corporation to apply.
The number of new tasks in 2025 is 24, and 50% of them will be selected preferentially from innovative companies that have carried out major support projects of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, such as TIPS and ultra-gap startups, to maximize performance creation through linkage between policies.
The Ministry of SMEs and Startups plans to support promising technology companies to develop innovative technologies that can challenge the global market through the Global Track and to operate linkage programs such as overseas networking and local R&D bases to enable them to pioneer the global market based on their R&D achievements.
Other details will be provided through the Scaleup Tips, DCP online and offline integrated business briefing session to be held on the 19th at 2:00 PM. Companies interested in participating in the business can directly contact the Scaleup Tips operator (24 consortiums, reference) or specialized agency (located on the 3rd floor of S5, Yeoksam Tips Town, ☎02-2280-0422/0426/0427).
Park Yong-soon, Director General for Technology Innovation Policy, said, “Strategic technologies such as AI are expected to rapidly reorganize the global market and create a monopoly structure centered around a small number of leading players,” and added, “Through Scale-up Tips, we will actively support companies to quickly respond to changes in the market and technology and advance into the global market, thereby creating opportunities to leap forward as a leading country in strategic technologies.”
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