[Edaily Reporter Kim Hyun-ah] “You can use AI without the internet or GPU. This is because we installed an AI software engine on Sambo Computer’s laptop.”

“We won the Innovation Award at CES this year for this technology,” said Yoo Seung-jae, CEO of Persona AI. “Our booth received a lot of attention when Gary Shapiro, the president of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), the organizer of CES, mentioned us as the best startup to watch.”

This technology can perform various AI functions such as image creation, document processing, translation, and coding in an offline environment, and can execute AI functions without a GPU by utilizing central processing unit (CPU)-based AI computation technology. Yoo said, “We generated about 3 billion won in sales in the second half of last year with PCs equipped with on-device AI technology, and we are currently in negotiations to supply 34,000 units to the military.”

On-device AI is a technology that executes AI models and processes data on devices such as smartphones, tablets, and smart speakers, rather than on cloud servers. He explained, “There are security concerns when using generative AI in places where security is important, such as the military or the financial sector, and a lot of GPUs are used when running AI models.” “However, we have developed a lightweight AI engine and operate it on the PC itself, so the level of data protection is high.”

CEO Yoo founded Persona AI in 2017. Currently, Vice President (CTO) Choi In-jeong, who is from Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, and Co-CEO Jeong Bo-yeong, who is from Naver Line IT Service Center, and 95 employees are helping out, but he says that he even shed tears in the early days while working alone.

Based on the self-developed AI engine, he supplied solutions such as AI contact centers (AICC), AI chatbots, and AI tutors to about 30 financial institutions, but it was not easy at first. However, after three years, sales increased and profits began to be generated. Accordingly, CEO Yoo announced, “We plan to file for an IPO at the end of the year.”

The secret to Persona AI's growth into a deep tech powerhouse is CEO Seungjae Yoo's philosophy of 'make the vision clear, but let's create our own AI engine.'

He said, "Some people flock to the metaverse because it's popular, and others flock to robots because it's popular, but we focused on AI engine development from the beginning," and "Thanks to that, when the Microsoft (MS) CTO visited Korea in 2023 after the launch of OpenAI ChatGPT, we were the first company he visited."

What differentiates Persona AI from other companies in terms of technology is the K-GPT engine optimized for Korean, and chatbot technology linked to RPA (Robotic Process Automation). CEO Yoo said, “In fact, it is not easy for insurance designers to understand ‘colon mucosal cancer.’ When AI reads and explains related pictures, optical character recognition (OCR) is not easy because there are many blurry pictures. However, our augmented search generation (RAG) technology recognizes related content and shows the content as text. It is a method of inferring and informing that it is this text. This is the difference.”

Thanks to this technological difference, not only the financial sector but also SK Telecom and Naver Cloud are investing in Persona AI and continuing their partnership. CEO Yoo added, “The Jeonbuk Bank chatbot case is also well known in the industry, and by linking all financial interfaces, 72 tasks such as loans, certificate issuance, inquiry, and changes can be processed within the chatbot.”

Regarding DeepSec, a Chinese company that suggested the possibility of developing a ‘low-cost, high-efficiency’ AI, he said, “DeepSec’s performance is good, but it is not at a level that surpasses OpenAI,” and “It clearly has strengths in terms of cost, but its security is weak.”

He said, “In the future, generative AI will be applied to automobiles and urban air traffic (UAM), but if the Internet goes out, it will be a big problem,” and “Server-based AI has its limits in solving this problem.” He continued, “The stock prices of Shield AI, an AI-based unmanned flight software development company in the US, and Palantir, a defense AI company, are rising for this reason,” and emphasized, “The emergence of DeepSec is accelerating the development of edge AI. It is a welcome development for our company.” 

- Original article: https://www.edaily.co.kr/News/Read?newsId=03148806642071504&mediaCodeNo=257