South Korea-based Smilegate Investment, a venture capital firm, said on June 23 that it had reached an initial close of US$40 million for its Next Pacific AI Fund as part of a US investment push it began last year.

The fund will invest in US pre-seed and seed-stage startups in two areas: business-to-business (B2B) AI agents, and AI-enabling technologies that address bottlenecks across the AI stack, from data centers to end devices.

Smilegate Investment, founded in 1999 and managing about 900 billion won (US$585 million) in assets, said additional closings with several limited partners were under way.

The firm also said it aims to help portfolio companies pursue partnerships and market-entry opportunities in Korea.

🔗 Source: Smilegate Investment