The Ventures Partners with Three AI Big Tech Firms to Provide LLM Credits to Startup Teams

The Ventures, an early-stage investment firm founded by partners with entrepreneurial backgrounds, announced on February 2 that it has entered into partnerships with OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. This marks the first time a domestic early-stage investor has simultaneously established partnerships with all three global big tech companies.

Through these partnerships, The Ventures will provide large language model (LLM) credits from each company to its portfolio startups. As a result, early-stage companies developing generative AI services can significantly reduce the burden of core infrastructure costs. For AI startups, monthly computing expenses for model training and API (Application Programming Interface) calls can range from several million to tens of millions of won during the initial stages of service development.

Startup teams invested in by The Ventures can now choose the most suitable model for their service among OpenAI's GPT series, Google's Gemini, and Anthropic's Claude, and use it to enhance their offerings.

Last year, The Ventures became the first in Korea to introduce Vicky, an AI investment manager, establishing a new investment decision-making system. Vicky demonstrated a high decision alignment rate of 87.5% with human investment managers, reducing the typical review period from several months to just one week. With the addition of LLM credit support, The Ventures has completed a one-stop support system that provides both rapid funding and the technical infrastructure needed for service implementation.

Lee Eunchan, investment manager at The Ventures, stated, "The most valuable resource for early-stage startups is time, and fast feedback and decision-making from investors are the best support to ensure founding teams do not miss the market's golden time. Collaboration with the three big tech companies will be a practical partnership that allows our portfolio companies to focus solely on technological innovation without being constrained by costs."

Founded in 2014, The Ventures is a specialized investment firm with dual licenses as an accelerator (AC) and venture capital (VC). As an operator of TIPS, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups' technology startup support program, it has invested in more than 250 companies across global markets including Korea, Southeast Asia, and North America to date.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.