This article was displayed on June 13, 2025, at 5:30 p.m. on the ChosunBiz MoneyMove site.
OpenResearch, which operates the artificial intelligence (AI)-based search engine "oo.ai," is seeking to attract investments worth approximately 50 billion won. The company's valuation is reported to be around 200 billion won.
According to the investment bank (IB) industry on the 13th, OpenResearch is currently meeting with investors to secure series A funding. Multiple large corporations are reportedly negotiating under non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to participate in the investment, and over 20 venture capital (VC) firms are said to be interested.
"oo.ai" is an AI-based search engine created by Kim Il-doo, the former head of Kakao Brain. Kim led key AI projects at Kakao Brain, including "KoGPT," "Karlo," and "Kara."
OpenResearch garnered attention in the industry after attracting seed investments of about 10 billion won shortly after its establishment in July last year. The investment included participation from LB Investment, Mirae Asset Capital, and Venture Investment, among others, and these institutions are reportedly likely to increase their investment in this series A round.
"oo.ai" was launched on March 17th. It provides natural language-based search capabilities using its own technology and third-party large language models (LLMs). The company reported that within six weeks of its launch, it recorded 1 million monthly active users (MAUs).
"oo.ai" features the ability to understand user intent and context to provide responses in report form. Additionally, it summarizes answers to questions first and then visualizes the sources of information.
The company noted that the response speed has also increased. Existing LLM-based search engines typically take around 10 seconds to provide answers, but "oo.ai" has reduced that average response time to about 3 seconds.
"oo.ai" aims to enhance its services as part of this series A investment round. It plans to lower costs to one-tenth of current levels while doubling the speed of its services. Additionally, it intends to offer paid services targeting professionals such as lawyers and doctors within the year.
Currently, various startups in the AI search engine market are strengthening their competitiveness through investment attraction. U.S. company "PuppleCity" is poised to secure $500 million in investments, with a valuation reaching $14 billion. "Genspark" was recognized with a valuation of $530 million last February and raised $100 million. "Glyn" received $150 million with a valuation of $7.2 billion on the 10th of this month (local time).