South Korea’s Galaxy Corporation, home to global artist G-Dragon, has reached unicorn status with a KRW 1 trillion (~ USD 740 million) valuation following a successful KRW 100 billion pre-IPO funding round. The company’s rapid ascent underscores a major shift in Korea’s creative economy, where AI, entertainment, and intellectual property (IP) are converging into a new “Enter-Tech” growth frontier shaping Asia’s next innovation wave.

Galaxy Corporation Achieves Unicorn Status with ₩100B Pre-IPO Investment

On December 9, Galaxy Corporation confirmed that it raised KRW 100 billion in a pre-IPO round, marking its official entry into Korea’s unicorn club. The valuation doubled from KRW 500 billion in 2023, when the company last raised capital, reaching the KRW 1 trillion threshold that defines a private unicorn in Korea.

Major investors included Korea Investment & Securities, Shinhan Venture Investment, Nvestor, and global participants such as Taiwan-listed ADATA and Hong Kong-listed Star Plus Legend Holdings. Notably, all investments were made in common stock, signaling high institutional confidence in Galaxy’s growth trajectory and business fundamentals.

Since its founding in 2019 by CEO Choi Yong-ho (age 36) with an initial capital of just KRW 1 million, Galaxy has raised a total of KRW 180 billion in accumulated funding. The company plans to pursue a KOSDAQ listing in 2026.

The Business Model Behind Korea’s Fastest-Growing Enter-Tech Company

Galaxy Corporation positions itself as a next-generation Enter-Tech company combining AI, entertainment, and digital commerce across four business verticals — Media, IP, Commerce, and Technology.

The company’s trajectory shifted sharply after signing G-Dragon (GD) in 2023, following the artist’s departure from YG Entertainment. G-Dragon’s world tour, brand collaborations, and high-profile appearances — including a live performance at the APEC 2025 Leaders’ Banquet — elevated Galaxy’s profile and helped transform its financial performance.

Annual revenue reportedly jumped from KRW 41.6 billion in 2023 to KRW 126 billion in the first half of 2025, while net income swung from a KRW 19 billion loss to a KRW 13 billion profit, signaling a successful turnaround driven by AI-based content scalability and IP commercialization.

The company has since expanded its artist portfolio, signing actor Song Kang-ho and entertainer Kim Jong-kook, and continues to integrate AI and AR/VR technologies into entertainment production. In April, Galaxy collaborated with Microsoft to create G-Dragon’s new music video using AI.

Galaxy’s R&D partnership with KAIST and the establishment of an Enter-Tech Research Institute further reinforce its technological identity, bridging entertainment with machine learning, content automation, and IP analytics.

Vision and Market Confidence

Investors cited Galaxy’s fusion-based creativity and long-term growth potential as decisive factors behind their participation. Unlike typical startup deals that rely on redeemable preferred shares (RCPS), this round consisted entirely of common stock — a rare signal of market confidence in a Korean entertainment-tech firm.

CEO Choi Yong-ho, now the youngest unicorn founder in Korea, stated through media reports that Galaxy aims to advance its AI-driven Enter-Tech platform and accelerate international expansion.

Cho said,

“We will evolve into a multifaceted Enter-Tech enterprise that merges our Super IP assets with AI technology to lead the next era of global creative innovation.”

Korea’s Creative Tech as a New Economic Engine

Galaxy Corporation’s rise highlights a broader transformation in Korea’s startup and creative economies, where entertainment, technology, and AI are forming new industry clusters with global competitiveness.

The case demonstrates how IP-driven business models can generate scalable value through digital innovation, moving beyond reliance on one-time cultural exports toward recurring revenue ecosystems built on data, licensing, and global content circulation.

The company’s integration of AI into entertainment mirrors Korea’s national push for creative-tech convergence industries, an area increasingly supported by both MSS (Ministry of SMEs and Startups) and KOCCA (Korea Creative Content Agency). These sectors are becoming pivotal in defining how Korean startups position themselves in global innovation networks — not only as content exporters, but as technology-powered IP creators.

For investors, Galaxy’s milestone reinforces the idea that Korean Enter-Tech startups can meet global capital standards while retaining cultural identity, a benchmark for future venture and policy models in Asia’s evolving entertainment-tech ecosystem.

Galaxy Corporation: The Enter-Tech Unicorn Blueprint

Finally, beyond its valuation leap, this crucial unicorn milestone of Galaxy Corporation marks the formal arrival of Korea’s Enter-Tech sector as a global contender. The company’s blend of AI engineering, cultural IP, and scalable business modeling embodies a blueprint for how Korea’s creative economy can evolve into a sustainable, export-ready innovation field.

And as the line between media, commerce, and technology continues to blur, Galaxy’s success signals that Korea’s next unicorn wave may not emerge solely from deep-tech or manufacturing. It may come instead from the fusion of creativity and computation, where cultural intelligence becomes the new engine of global competitiveness.

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