Jeju Creative Economy Innovation Center to Host 2025 AI-focused Open Innovation Meetup

The Jeju Center for Creative Economy & Innovation (hereinafter, Jeju Center) has embarked on building an ultra-differentiated AI ecosystem by facilitating innovative encounters between artificial intelligence (AI) startups and large corporations. Recently, in collaboration with DB Insurance, Chokwang Paint, and Hana Bank, it successfully hosted the '2025 AI Collabo Open Ground Meetup,' drawing significant attention. This '2025 AI Collabo Open Ground Program' is a venue for open innovation aimed at broadening the horizons of the AI industry and generating tangible results through synergy between large corporations and startups in Jeju. The Jeju Center had previously identified specific demands from large corporations across various industries such as insurance, construction, and finance, and carefully selected 12 promising AI startups that matched these needs, bringing them together in one place. Part 1 of the meetup featured presentations on the Jeju Center's open innovation initiatives and future directions, and heightened the atmosphere with 'reverse pitching,' where each large corporation directly presented the challenges they needed to address. Part 2 involved group business meetings where participating startups and large corporation representatives put their heads together to flesh out ideas and deeply discuss the potential for business collaboration. The fruits of this collaboration do not stop here. For startups successfully matched through the meetup, exceptional mid-to-long-term follow-up support will be provided until December of this year. This includes up to 10 million KRW in PoC (Proof of Concept) funding, OI-purpose Jeju "workation" opportunities, review for center seed money and investment fund investments, connections to global programs and overseas exhibition participation, and customized acceleration. Lee Byeong-seon, Head of the Jeju Center, stated, "This meetup will serve as an important stepping stone for AI startups to partner with large corporations, materialize innovative ideas, and scale up." He further expressed his ambition, "Moving forward, we will actively discover AI startups and expand opportunities for growth through these open innovation programs." The Jeju Center plans to continuously support the successful leaps of key players who will lead the future AI industry.