McKinley Rice, operator of the global AI infrastructure platform ‘Raidrop’, has secured $8.5 million (KRW 12.5 billion) in Series A funding. Korea Investment Partners led the round, with participation from new investors KB Investment, Kiwoom Investment, and KDB Capital. Existing investors Daekyo Investment and DS&Partners also participated in the follow-on round. Combined with a $3.4 million (KRW 5 billion) seed round co-led by Murex Partners and DS&Partners in 2023, McKinley Rice has now raised $11.9 million (KRW 17.5 billion) in total.

Since its founding in 2018, McKinley Rice has focused on solving structural challenges created by national boundaries. The company entered the Indian market to address global workforce imbalances, building a cross-border HR platform that connects premium Indian IT talent with Korean and U.S. companies. This has positioned the company as a leader in Korea’s global talent recruitment market. This year, McKinley Rice was selected as the exclusive partner for the Ministry of SMEs and Startups’ overseas software developer recruitment program, demonstrating its recognized expertise in the public sector.

McKinley Rice is now evolving into an AI infrastructure platform called ‘Raidrop’ that integrates its global talent network with data infrastructure. The platform enables companies to access both the talent and data needed for AI development through unified ‘AI specialist recruitment solutions’ and ‘AI training data construction services.’ Raidrop maintains a global talent pool of 500,000 professionals annually, concentrated in AI industry hubs like India and Southeast Asia, facilitating rapid placement of critical AI roles including data scientists and machine learning engineers. Leveraging its global data centers, the company delivers high-quality AI training data at costs up to 50% below domestic rates. Core services include data collection and labeling, data modeling, and an AI marketplace.

The investment will support efforts to narrow the technology gap within the global AI ecosystem and establish a new technology infrastructure centered on emerging markets. McKinley Rice plans to expand its global AI talent and data networks, enhance its AI training data infrastructure, and develop LLM (Localized Large Language Models tailored for emerging markets). The company aims to become a global infrastructure hub connecting talent and technology across borders while improving accessibility to AI resources.

A Korea Investment Partners representative commented, “We expect Raidrop to emerge as essential infrastructure for the global AI ecosystem by bridging talent and technology. Our investment decision reflects strong confidence in their emerging market expansion strategy and proven execution capabilities.”

Jungwoo Kim, CEO of McKinley Rice, stated, “AI technology advancement depends fundamentally on the quality of talent and data. As an infrastructure company connecting talent and data across borders, McKinley Rice will work to close the AI technology gap between developed and developing nations while pioneering a global AI infrastructure ecosystem centered on Asia.”