NHN Cloud joins ranks of unicorns with $120 mn funding

NHN Cloud Co., a computer clouding service provider, has raised 150 billion won ($120 million) from South Korea-based IMM Investment, joining the ranks of unicorn companies, or those with a corporate value of $1 billion or more.

The company said on Thursday it has raised the capital through new share issues placed to a special purpose company of IMM investment.

The investment marked its first funding secured from an external investor since spinning off from South Korea’s leading IT service company NHN Corp. in April of last year.

NHN Cloud said it would use the proceeds to boost R&D, market share and overseas business.

Its parent company, specializing in game development, began the cloud service in 2014. Cloud computing offers data storage services, or accessibility to data centers over a network so that its customers do not need to build and maintain data centers.

IMM Investment manages about 7 trillion won in assets with a focus on venture capital, private equity and infrastructure sectors.

An IMM Investment official said it would help NHN Could expand businesses by forming partnerships with its portfolio companies in the digital infrastructure segment.

The alternative investment firm has also aggressively invested in leading companies in other sectors: South Korea’s largest online fashion platform Musinsa; Woowa Brothers Corp., operator of the country’s top food delivery app Baedal Minjok; game developer Krafton Inc.; and Bucketplace Co., operator of the country’s largest home interior platform.

Last year, IMM Private Equity and MBK Partners made a joint investment of 450 billion won in Megazone Cloud Corp., the country’s largest managed cloud service provider.

Meanwhile, Samsung SDS Co. on Thursday reported a 30% surge in fourth-quarter operating profit, supported by managed cloud computing services.

For all of 2022, revenue from the cloud computing division exceeded 1 trillion won ($810 million) for the first time in its history. Combined, its annual sales hit a record 17 trillion won.

It bumped up dividend payments by 33% on-year to 3,200 won per share for 2022 thanks to the strong results. 

Write to Seung-woo Lee and Sungsu Bae at swlee@hankyung.com
Yeonhee Kim edited this article