Kakao Ventures invests in AI optimization startup Omelet

Kakao Ventures Corp. has made an undisclosed amount of seed investment into Omelet, a South Korean early stage startup developing industrial operation optimization programs with generative artificial intelligence technology, the startup announced on Wednesday.

Founded in 2023, Omelet develops generative AI-based industrial operation optimization programs that companies across various industries can use to improve operating efficiency and productivity, explained its founder and Chief Executive Officer Park Jinkyoo.

Park is also an associate professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering, as well as Artificial Intelligence at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).

Omelet’s program is provided in the form of Software as a Service (SaaS), and the cloud-based program uses generative AI to come up with a combinatorial optimization algorithm that determines the optimal operational process and resource distribution.

Combinatorial optimization is the process of finding an optimal solution within a finite set of possible solutions.

A combinatorial optimization solver can find solutions to problems that have hundreds of thousands of possible combinations in just a matter of a few seconds by guiding the search towards promising combinations through a careful analysis of the search space.

COMBINATORIAL OPTIMIZATION SOLVER

Omelet’s program is used to improve efficiency and productivity in industrial operations by finding the best route to deliver, optimizing facility management and prioritizing resource distribution processes, according to the company.

Its combinatorial optimization is more accurate and faster than the conventional optimization algorithms, said the company.

Its software is currently applied to autonomous robots in logistics centers and factories. It has also proved to be effective in optimizing logistics transport systems.

Omelet plans to launch an Optimization as a Service, Infra, Systems (OaaSIS) program for logistics transport systems this year.

It also plans to apply its program to chip architecture design and novel drug ingredient development later. 

“Omelet’s generative AI-powered optimization technology will innovate our life as it can give practical, real solutions to complex problems humans can’t handle,” said Park.

“Omelet boasts the world’s best AI and optimization technologies,” said Jang Won-yeol, Kakao Ventures’ principal associate. “The company will stand out as its solutions are expected to fix labor shortages at logistics and manufacturing sites and high energy costs.”

Kakao Ventures is a venture capital firm under Korea’s major mobile lifestyle platform company Kakao Corp. and is recently seeking to bump up investments in Korean startups that make AI models faster and cheaper.

Founded in 2012, it has invested in more than 200 startups at home and abroad.

Write to Eun-Yi Ko at koko@hankyung.com

Sookyung Seo edited this article.