Wrtn Reaches Unicorn Status, Kicks Off IPO Preparations

* Editor's note: AI PRISM (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an artificial intelligence-based personalized news recommendation and summary service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six news items tailored to each reader type.

1. 'AI Unicorn' Wrtn Starts IPO Push, Picks Mirae Asset Securities (006800) as Lead Underwriter

- Key summary: AI service platform company Wrtn Technologies said on the 23rd that it has selected Mirae Asset Securities as lead underwriter and NH Investment & Securities (005940) as co-underwriter for its initial public offering. Wrtn plans to work out details with the underwriters with a target of filing for preliminary review next year. Wrtn joined the ranks of unicorns in August this year after raising 100 billion won in Series C funding at a valuation of more than 1 trillion won, bringing its cumulative investment to about 230 billion won. There are five domestic AI startups valued at more than 1 trillion won — Wrtn, Rebellions, FuriosaAI, Galaxy Corporation and Upstage — and Wrtn is the only one in the AI services field.

2. Anthropic and OpenAI Release 'Half-Price Models' Side by Side

- Key summary: Anthropic and OpenAI have released AI models that deliver top-tier performance while sharply cutting prices. Anthropic on the 22nd local time unveiled Claude Opus 5.5, which performs at the level of its top model Claude Fable 5.1 on most tasks while costing 40% less than its predecessor Opus 5. On coding and knowledge-work benchmarks, it scored higher than Fable 5.1. OpenAI on the same day unveiled GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, lower-tier versions of its top model GPT-6 Astra, with application programming interface (API) pricing at half the level of the previous generation. Separately, according to The Information, Microsoft plans to discount subscription fees for its corporate AI agent Copilot from October by about 30% for customers buying more than 1,000 licenses and by up to 50% for those buying more than 10,000.

3. Security Gap at Gabia Exposes Personal Data of 2,998 Customers

- Key summary: Groupware software developer Gabia said on its website on the 23rd that customer personal information had been leaked. As of 3 p.m. on the 23rd, 2,998 customers were confirmed affected. The exposed items were names, IDs, email addresses and mobile phone numbers, and Gabia said account passwords had not been leaked so far. An external attacker gained access to internal systems by exploiting insufficient verification of external requests in some web service functions, and customer personal information was transmitted outside during the process. Gabia reported the breach to the Personal Information Protection Commission and the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) after recognizing the theft at 1:05 p.m. on the 21st, and is investigating the cause and whether further data was exposed together with relevant agencies.

4. [Exclusive] LG Pushes 'Exaone' Exports to Central Asia and Middle East, Expanding AI Territory in Emerging Markets

- Key summary: LG has begun full-scale AI model cooperation with emerging countries in Central Asia and the Middle East. LG AI Research signed a memorandum of understanding with the Kazakhstan government in mid-September and agreed to jointly develop a Kazakh-language model with local companies and universities using Exaone technology. Next month in the Middle East, it is also pursuing an MOU with a sovereign wealth fund on Exaone Business Intelligence (BI), a finance-focused model that analyzes some 8,000 listed companies. According to the World Bank's 2026 World Development Report, English accounted for 61.1% of training datasets registered on Hugging Face by language this year, with other European languages at 26.3% and Chinese at 5.4%, while Arabic stood at 2.4% and Kazakh did not register in the statistics. Meanwhile, domestic sovereign AI developers are expanding into emerging markets, with NAVER developing Thai- and Arabic-language large language models (LLMs) and SK Telecom (017670) and Upstage forming similar partnerships.

5. Kakao (035720) Blocks Kakao Mobility's U.S. Listing, Citing 'Limited Benefit to Ordinary Shareholders'

- Key summary: According to the information technology industry on the 23rd, Kakao's board recently resolved to oppose the planned American depositary receipt (ADR) listing of its subsidiary Kakao Mobility in the United States. Unlike a typical initial public offering, the listing would use only the stake held by second-largest shareholder TPG, a private equity firm, as the underlying asset, and Kakao judged that it was focused on monetizing a specific shareholder's stake and would be difficult to return as economic benefit to ordinary shareholders. Concerns over conflicts of interest were also cited, including that a duplicate listing alongside the parent company could disperse investment demand and widen the discount to net asset value (NAV). Kakao said, however, that it was not denying the financial investor's need to exit, and that it could reconsider if the listing structure or economic benefits change, adding that it will disclose related details again upon a final decision or within six months.

6. 'For U.S. Defense Cooperation, Partner With Silicon Valley Rather Than Lockheed Martin'

- Key summary: A proposal has emerged that Korean companies seeking to export defense products to the United States should join hands with innovative Silicon Valley firms instead of established defense contractors constrained by arms regulations. Bill Greenwalt, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), said at a seminar hosted by the Korea-U.S. congressional exchange center in Washington on the 22nd local time that the natural partners for Korean companies are firms seeking to transform the U.S. defense market with advanced technologies such as AI and robotics, and that cooperation with Silicon Valley companies is the model for the future. Cooperation with traditional defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin is likely to run into barriers including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), the senior fellow said, while AI, robotics and autonomous systems — areas Silicon Valley focuses on — are dual-use technologies employed by both the military and the private sector, leaving relatively more room for cooperation. On shipbuilding, the senior fellow said a separate framework may be needed beyond partial revisions to existing rules on intellectual property and export controls, citing other transaction authority (OTA) as an alternative.