Korea's AI Foundry startup turns a Seoul expo into a three-front business development push.
TL;DR: VIDRAFT, a Korean AI startup, participated in Smart Life Week 2026 at COEX in Seoul from October 6–8, 2026, holding back-to-back meetings with international investors, public institutions, and distribution companies. The company showcased its custom AI platform, "AI Foundry," and is now pursuing follow-up discussions across all three sectors.
VIDRAFT, the Korean AI startup building customizable enterprise AI solutions, used Smart Life Week 2026 as a launchpad for a concentrated wave of business development activity, meeting representatives from global venture funds, government-affiliated bodies, and hardware distributors during the three-day event held at COEX in Seoul.
Smart Life Week 2026 — co-hosted by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the World Smart City Organization (WeGO), and organized by the Seoul Digital Foundation — drew more than 500 cities and companies this year. VIDRAFT secured an exhibition booth at the event and filled its calendar with a series of targeted meetings.
On the investment front, the company briefed deal teams from Salesforce Ventures and the Korea office of 500 Global on its current business trajectory. Both are prominent venture capital names with broad portfolios in enterprise technology, making them natural conversation partners for a startup positioning AI solutions for real-world commercial deployment.
In the public-sector lane, VIDRAFT held a separate session with Investissement Québec — the investment and economic development agency of the Canadian province of Quebec — to explore potential areas of cooperation. The meeting signals that VIDRAFT's ambitions extend beyond domestic Korean partners and into North American institutional relationships.
The distribution angle came through a meeting with TG Sambo Computer, a Korean hardware company with established retail and B2B distribution channels. The two sides explored how VIDRAFT's AI capabilities could be layered on top of TG Sambo's existing hardware distribution network — a model that could bring AI-powered products to a wider customer base without requiring VIDRAFT to build its own logistics infrastructure.
Central to every conversation was VIDRAFT's proprietary platform, AI Foundry — described by the company as a system that designs, trains, and validates AI models tailored to each client's specific operational challenges before delivering the solution. Rather than selling a one-size-fits-all model, VIDRAFT positions AI Foundry as a bespoke pipeline: a client brings a problem, and VIDRAFT engineers an AI workflow calibrated to solve it. The platform was the centerpiece of the company's exhibition booth throughout the event.
CEO Min-sik Kim summarized the company's intent at the event: "This was about connecting technology to business," he said, adding that VIDRAFT plans to continue follow-up discussions across all three tracks — investment, public sector, and distribution.
Smart Life Week, with its focus on smart cities and urban digital infrastructure, is an unusual but strategically savvy venue for an AI startup to court enterprise partners. By choosing an event that attracts government agencies and city planners alongside technology vendors, VIDRAFT positioned itself at the intersection of public-sector demand and private-sector innovation — exactly the territory where AI Foundry's customization-first approach is most compelling.
The simultaneous pursuit of venture capital, institutional cooperation, and hardware distribution partnerships reflects a multi-track go-to-market strategy that is becoming increasingly common among Korean deep-tech startups. Rather than sequencing these conversations, VIDRAFT is running them in parallel — compressing the timeline from technology demonstration to commercial agreement.
The Investissement Québec conversation is also worth watching. Canadian provincial investment agencies often serve as a bridge for foreign companies exploring Canadian market entry or R&D partnerships. A formal follow-up with Quebec's investment arm could open doors to North American public-sector contracts or co-development arrangements.
For VIDRAFT, an event that lasted just three days appears to have seeded a pipeline of conversations that could shape its business direction well into 2027.
Q: What is VIDRAFT's AI Foundry platform?
A: AI Foundry is VIDRAFT's proprietary platform that designs, trains, and validates AI models tailored to each client's specific operational needs, delivering a customized solution rather than a generic off-the-shelf product.
Q: Which organizations did VIDRAFT meet at Smart Life Week 2026?
A: VIDRAFT held meetings with Salesforce Ventures, the Korea office of 500 Global, Investissement Québec (the investment agency of Canada's Quebec province), and TG Sambo Computer, a Korean hardware distributor.
Q: What is Smart Life Week, and who organizes it?
A: Smart Life Week is an annual event co-hosted by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the World Smart City Organization (WeGO), and organized by the Seoul Digital Foundation. The 2026 edition attracted more than 500 participating cities and companies.
Source: 동아일보 (2026-10-08) — original article