Trillion Labs, a startup developing Korean-centric large language models (LLMs), has raised $4.2 million (approximately 5.7 billion KRW) in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Strong Ventures with participation from Kakao Ventures, Bass Investment, The Ventures, Goodwater Capital, and BAM Ventures.

Trillion Labs is focused on building foundation models for LLMs tailored specifically to Korea. They aim to create generative AI that accurately understands Korean culture and customs, using large-scale Korean datasets for pre-training. By addressing potential biases from English-centric LLMs, Trillion Labs seeks to develop AI that leverages Korea-specific information, contributing to securing AI sovereignty in the digital age as the global competition for AI leadership intensifies.

As AI is poised to drive innovation across various sectors, the English-speaking LLM market is expanding rapidly. Non-English-speaking countries like Japan, China, and Indonesia are also accelerating the development of AI models in their native languages. Relying on English-based AI often results in suboptimal performance and fails to fully reflect local culture and sentiment, raising concerns about losing influence in future AI-driven industries. Against this backdrop, Trillion Labs aims to bolster the competitiveness of Korea’s core industries, such as content and advanced manufacturing, through a Korean-centric LLM.

Led by CEO Jaemin Shin, a key researcher behind Naver’s HyperCLOVA X, Trillion Labs is composed of experts who have been designing and researching LLM models at universities in Korea and abroad. Since 2017, Shin has been involved in natural language processing and LLM research, with papers presented at prestigious conferences such as ACL (Association for Computational Linguistics), EMNLP (Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing), and ICLR (International Conference on Learning Representations). His recent work on synthetic data has drawn significant attention in academia, positioning him as a leading expert in LLMs in Korea.

Following this funding round, Trillion Labs plans to aggressively secure high-quality language data and focus on advancing their technology. They aim to complete the most accurate Korean LLM foundation model by the end of the year. Looking ahead, they plan to expand into regions with similar linguistic characteristics, such as Japan and Southeast Asia, positioning themselves as a leading AI hub for the Asian market.

Deuk-hwan Shin, Principal Investor at Strong Ventures, said, “Trillion Labs is uniquely positioned to realize Sovereign AI with their Korean-based LLMs. We expect them to drive seamless innovation not only in Korea’s AI industry but across all sectors where AI is applied.” Young-moo Kim, Investment Manager at Kakao Ventures, added, “We were deeply impressed by Trillion Labs’ bold vision to develop a fully independent Korean-based LLM from scratch, starting with pre-training—an ambitious challenge few have dared to take on. We hope their LLM will play a significant role in securing AI leadership.”

Jaemin Shin, CEO of Trillion Labs, stated, “Without AI sovereignty, we risk relying on subpar AI performance compared to other nations. With our Korean-centric LLM, we aim to establish Korea as a leading AI nation and demonstrate that Northeast Asia, often overlooked in the generative AI market, can also take the lead.”