Pensive, an overseas-founded company headquartered in Silicon Valley, developed an AI for grading university exams and successfully raised investment from Mayfield, a top global venture capital (VC) firm, early this year. As word spread that Mayfield had picked it out, love calls from other investment firms are now continuing.
Yang Yoon-seok, CEO of Pensive, whom this reporter met in Silicon Valley on the 16th, said he decided to start the company ahead of his 2024 graduation from UC Berkeley. "I thought that to build a company that would go down in history, you have to start in the largest and most difficult market, the United States," Yang said.
Yang's early judgment was not wrong. Local VCs made seed investments right after the company was established. In addition, the scout funds of Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) participated in the Series A investment, raising the possibility of attracting follow-on investment. A scout fund is a kind of exploratory investment program in which large VCs make small investments through outside investors before formal investment. This means Sequoia Capital and a16z could participate as formal investors in follow-on investment. Pensive currently provides grading services to more than 100 universities and over 1,000 professors.
Like Pensive, cases of startups founded overseas by Korean founders in the United States and elsewhere — so-called "overseas-founded companies" — successfully attracting local investment have been increasing more rapidly recently. In particular, as Samsung Electronics and SK hynix lead the global semiconductor market and raise the presence of Korean companies, local interest in deep tech startups such as artificial intelligence (AI) founded by Korean founders is growing even further.
Lim Do-hyun, CEO of "Soom," which develops a video-production AI agent, received investment from local accelerator "Founders" after establishing a US corporation this year. "In Korea it took years to receive an investment proposal, but in the US they decided quickly by looking at the founding team's execution ability rather than academic background or track record," Lim said. Soom unveiled a service that combines several AI video models to produce marketing videos, and plans to place a research and development (R&D) organization in Korea soon.
Park Chae-geun, CEO of Pickle, which develops personal AI avatars, also came to Silicon Valley in 2025 to start his company. Pickle raised a total of 4.5 million dollars in investment from Y Combinator (YC), a world-class accelerator, and others. "I thought that to build a technology company that changes people's daily lives, you have to start in Silicon Valley, where large-scale capital and global expansion experience are concentrated," Park said. "It's harder than starting up domestically, but it's a road that must be taken."
Han Yoon-seok, development lead and co-founder of "Blockit AI," which operates a scheduling AI agent, jumped into entrepreneurship based on his experience working at Google. It was a great help that a co-founder was a former Sequoia Capital investor with a strong investor network. "Since Silicon Valley is a market that runs on connections, if you receive investment from a good accelerator or VC, you can gain strong trust in follow-on investment and hiring," Han said.
According to Startup Alliance, the number of newly founded Korean startups in the US was provisionally tallied at around 16 in 2022, rising to around 40 annually in 2025. The analysis is that Silicon Valley's investment culture, which prioritizes technological capability and growth potential in the global market over the founder's alma mater and country, is promoting overseas founding.
As overseas founding establishes itself as a new trend in the venture ecosystem, voices are growing in the venture industry that government support should be expanded, moving away from the view that simply classifies these companies as foreign firms. The argument is that support needs to be based on how much the results achieved in the global market lead to domestic employment, R&D, and follow-on founding, rather than on the location of the corporation or the founder's nationality. There is also a point that, as the status of the semiconductor industry built up by Samsung Electronics and SK hynix leads to global investors' trust in Korean deep tech startups, policy support should be strengthened to connect this to investment attraction and overseas market entry.
Kim Kwang-rok, CEO of Sazze Partners, stressed, "Moloco is a US company, but it hires excellent Korean talent with money earned overseas." He added, "We can expect not only the inflow of foreign currency and job creation, but also the effect of raising the overall capabilities of the venture ecosystem as talent who have gained experience at global companies start businesses again."
Kim stressed that the criteria for defining overseas-founded companies must be changed first. "We should not only ask about the founder's nationality or which country the corporation is in, but look at what value the company creates for the Korean economy," he said. "If they hire talent in Korea, carry out R&D, or help domestic companies enter overseas markets, they need to be included as targets of government support."
The changing view of Silicon Valley venture capital (VC) toward Korean startups is also cited as a reason the government should hurry support for overseas-founded companies. In the past, local investors perceived Korea as a country with a small market size and high dependence on domestic demand, but recently they have begun to evaluate it as a cradle of deep tech companies with semiconductor, AI, and manufacturing technology.
David Suh, CEO of Korea Investment Partners USA, explained, "US VCs are very interested in startups where former Samsung Electronics and SK hynix employees participate as founders or that cooperate with these companies. It's the same principle as when we in the past highly valued founders from big tech such as Google and Meta." He said the very fact that Korea is a country where companies leading the global semiconductor market have grown acts as a "trust asset" showing Korea's technological capability and talent level.
"Semiconductors, data centers, energy, and bio are not a temporary trend but industries that will continue to grow for more than the next 10 years," Suh said. "Korea has not only excellent technical manpower but also a solid manufacturing base in semiconductors, batteries, and automobiles, so it has conditions worth the attention of local investors."
