About Friend
Friend is a venture capital firm founded in 2018. It is primarily based out of Seoul, South Korea. As of Nov 2025, Friend is an active investor, having invested in 6 companies, with 1 new investment in the last 12 months. It primarily invests in Series A round in South Korea based startups. Its investments are spread across a wide range of sectors from High Tech to Life Sciences and Enterprise Applications. Most recently it participated in the $***** Series A round of CloudHospital A lot of funds co-invest with Friend, with names like The Wells Investment sharing a substantial percentage of its portfolio. Friend has team of 5 people including 2 partners.Key Metrics
Team Members
Portfolio Count
Portfolio Sectors
Portfolio Locations
Rounds of Entry
Series A, Seed & 1 more
Portfolio Soonicorns
Deals in last 12 months
Friend's List of Top Investments
Friend has a portfolio of 6 companies. Their most notable investments are in CastingN and Softberry.Their portfolio spans across and South Korea. They have invested in High Tech, Life Sciences, Enterprise Applications and 7 other sectors, across stages such as Series A, Seed and 1 more. Here is the list of top investments by Friend:1. RideFlux
Developer of software solutions for autonomous driving systems and related services. The company focuses on creating technology intended to provide efficient transportation. It develops software for use in autonomous vehicles. The company also offers services related to its autonomous driving technology.
Key facts about RideFlux
- Founded Year: 2018
- Location: South Korea
- Stage: Series B
- Total Funding till date: $58.6M
- Employee Count: 65 as on Aug 31, 2026
- Investors: Korean Development Bank, SBI Investment Korea and 13 Others
- Latest Funding Round: Series B, Dec 30, 2025, $*****
- Highlight: Editors' Pick
Network of hospitals and doctors facilitating medical care bookings globally. It provides a search platform for individuals seeking various medical treatments. The network connects patients with healthcare providers. It offers resources for finding and booking medical services.
Key facts about CloudHospital
- Founded Year: 2019
- Location: Seoul (South Korea)
- Stage: Series A
- Total Funding till date: $5.86M
- Employee Count: 45 as on Aug 31, 2026
- Investors: Ascendo Ventures, Hi Investment and 6 Others
- Latest Funding Round: Series A, Nov 17, 2025, $*****
Developer of biomarker-based therapeutics for the treatment of cancer. The company has a drug pipeline of small molecules (WM-S1), antibodies(WM-A1), and protein (WM-P1) therapies in the preclinical stage targeting various cancers including colon, breast, NSLC, liver, and prostate. WM-S1 is CRG targeted inhibitor and WM-A1 is an antibody targeting cancer immunotherapy-related genes (CMG).
Key facts about Wellmarker Bio
- Founded Year: 2016
- Location: Seoul (South Korea)
- Stage: Series B
- Total Funding till date: $45.2M
- Employee Count: 5 as on Aug 31, 2026
- Investors: KB Securities, Magellan Technology Investment and 19 Others
- Latest Funding Round: Series B, Jul 08, 2019, $*****
- Highlight: Editors' Pick

4. Softberry
App-based platform offering charge point locater services. The company offers mobile application EV infra which provides information on electric vehicle charging points, Soodal offers information on hydrogen vehicle charging stations. Also, it offers in-app payments for charging. The mobile application is available for Android and iOS platforms.
Key facts about Softberry
- Founded Year: 2016
- Location: Seoul (South Korea)
- Stage: Series A
- Total Funding till date: $70.6M
- Investors: SK, Hyundai and 6 Others
- Latest Funding Round: Series A, Mar 21, 2024, $*****
- Highlight: Editors' Pick

5. CUBIG
Developer of an AI-ready data platform for enterprise AI execution. It is a developer of an AI-ready data platform that prepares enterprise production data for use in AI training, evaluation, and execution. Its platform, Syntitan, diagnoses enterprise data across six readiness axes covering usability, integrity, context, consistency, reproducibility, and traceability, brings the data to an AI-ready state, seals each prepared dataset into a fixed release state identified by a content hash, and binds every AI run to that state, so a team can reproduce the data state behind an earlier result and compare what has changed. Syntitan works alongside existing storage, pipeline, and catalogue tools rather than replacing them. Two engines run inside the platform. DTS transforms scarce, imbalanced, or low-quality data into datasets that models can train and evaluate on, extracting statistical characteristics without moving the original. LLM Capsule is a context-preserving data layer that lets LLM, RAG, and agent workflows run on data that cannot leave in its original form, replacing designated values with structure-preserving substitutes and reconstructing usable output inside the customer-controlled environment.
Key facts about CUBIG
- Founded Year: 2021
- Location: Seongnam (South Korea)
- Stage: Seed
- Employee Count: 39 as on Aug 31, 2026
- Investors: IBK Capital, Intops Investment and 6 Others
- Latest Funding Round: Seed, Aug 13, 2025, $*****
- Highlight: Editors' Pick
Friend's Year-on-Year Investment Trends
Friend has invested in 6 companies over the last 8 years, with an average of 1 new investment annually in the last 5 years. In 2025, it made 2 investments. Its most recent first time investment was in CloudHospital.Year | No. of Investments | ||
|---|---|---|---|
1st Round | Follow-on | Total | |
2026 (YTD) | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2025 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
2024 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
2023 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2022 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2021 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2020 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
2019 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2018 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Friend's Investments by Stage
Friend has made 4 investments in Series A stage with an average round size of $10.6M, 1 investment in Seed stage and 1 investment in Series B stage with an average round size of $18.8M.Stage of entry | No. of Investments |
|---|---|
Series A | 4 |
Seed | 1 |
Series B | 1 |
Note: We have considered here, only first round of investments
Friend's Investments by Sector
Friend has a diverse portfolio, with companies operating in the High Tech, Auto Tech, Enterprise Applications, Business Services and Consumer. Notably, it has invested in 5 Tech companies, 3 Enterprise (B2B) companies, 3 Software companies and at least 2 companies focusing on Consumer (B2C).Sector | No. of Investments |
|---|---|
High Tech | 4 |
Auto Tech | 2 |
Enterprise Applications | 2 |
Business Services | 1 |
Consumer | 1 |
Others | 6 |
Note: We have considered here, only first round of investments
Friend's Investments by Geography
Friend has made most investments in South Korea (6).Friend's recent investments
Friend has not made any investment in 2026 so far.Here are the most recent investments by Friend:
Date | Company | Location | Round Details | Round Amount | Co-Investors |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nov 17, 2025 | South Korea | Series A | 9847 | ||
Aug 13, 2025 | South Korea | Seed | 8054 | ||
Oct 31, 2024 | South Korea | Series B | 3005 | [+7] | |
Mar 21, 2024 | South Korea | Series A | 9710 | [+3] | |
Feb 24, 2020 | South Korea | Series A | 6493 | [+2] |
Team profile of Friend
Friend has a team of 5 members including 2 Partners and 3 Principals. Friend's team does not sit on the board of any company as of now.Here is a list of all team members in Friend:
Name | Designation | Location | Board Memberships | Contact Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Partner | - | - | - | |
Partner | - | - | - | |
Principal | - | - | - | |
Principal | - | - | - | |
Principal | - | - | - |
Co-investors of Friend
Over the past 8 years, 50 investors have co-invested in Friend's portfolio companies. This includes only funds.
- Invested before Friend: Atinum Investment, Socar and 18 others have invested in rounds before Friend. There is 1 company where Atinum Investment has invested before Friend and 1 company where Socar has invested before Friend.
- Top Co-investors of Friend: 24 investors entered a company along with Friend. These include investors like The Wells Investment (2 companies).
- Invested after Friend: A total of 6 investors have invested in Friend's portfolio after their investments. Top Investors include Korean Development Bank (1 company), Orbit Partners (1 company) and bric-investment.com (1 company).
Recent News related to Friend
•
Self-driving tech startup RideFlux raises $1.9 mn in Series BKedglobal•Oct 31, 2024•RideFlux, Atinum Investment, Yuanda Financial Holdings, Korea Investment Holdings and 9 others
•
Electric vehicle charging ‘Softberry’ attracts investment in Series A bridge worth 4.8 billion wonWowtale•Mar 21, 2024•Softberry, Partners Investment, Friend, NH Venture Investment and 4 others
