Startup Alliance (Director Lee Ki-dae) published the 'CES 2024 Innovation Award and Beyond' report on the 22nd. It paid attention to the fact that Korea has won the Innovation Award for two consecutive years in 2025 CES, following 2024, and investigated the actual business performance of Innovation Award-winning startups. It looked into the status of investment attraction in 2024 of CES 2024 Innovation Award-winning startups, and utilized The VC's Korean startup database for this purpose.
According to a survey by Startup Alliance last year, 116 Korean startups won the CES 2024 Innovation Award. Of these, only one company attracted overseas investment over the past year. In addition, 20 startups received investment from domestic VCs, CVCs, etc. As a result, 18.1% of startups that won the CES 2024 Innovation Award attracted follow-up investment.
The CES 2024 Innovation Award-winning startups that attracted investment were in the following fields: six in sustainability and three in artificial intelligence. This was followed by two each in healthcare, smart home & smart city, human security, robots, and computer hardware, and one each in mobility and agriculture and food, which attracted investment after winning the Innovation Award.
Meanwhile, 72.4% of startups that received the CES 2024 Innovation Awards were early-stage startups below Series A that needed investment to advance technology and products rather than increase sales. In this situation, less than one in five startups attracted investment, and only one company attracted overseas investment in line with the purpose of an overseas exhibition. If the main purpose of participating in the exhibition is to secure potential customers, it may be too early for most early-stage startups to participate in CES. Nevertheless, the fact that many early-stage startups are participating can be seen as a reflection of the reality that public institutions' startup support programs are focused on this stage. The Startup Alliance said that the phenomenon of the largest number of participants and the largest number of awards every year is due to the government and public institutions focusing on increasing the number of participating companies and awards, and that the CES Innovation Awards are ultimately being used as a domestic marketing tool rather than an overseas expansion.
Lastly, the Startup Alliance argued that, contrary to the public perspective that as many companies as possible should be supported equally, the startup ecosystem should not be overlooked as it operates on the market logic of selection and concentration. It also added that measures should be taken to intensively showcase companies that are competitive overseas and help them achieve actual corporate performance through follow-up processes.
The full report can be downloaded from the Startup Alliance blog.
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