Public Data and AI Startup Competition Draws 7,440 Teams, a Record High

[Financial News]  A record 7,440 teams entered a startup competition using public data and artificial intelligence (AI). The number of participating teams rose 93% from last year. Ten teams that advanced through preliminary rounds held by individual agencies and an integrated final round will compete in the grand finals in November after overcoming competition equivalent to 744 teams for every spot.
The Ministry of the Interior and Safety held the integrated final round of the 14th Pan-Governmental Startup Competition Using Public Data and AI at Seoul Startup Hub from Sept. 30 through the 2nd of this month. It announced on the 5th that it had selected the 10 teams advancing to the grand finals.
A total of 7,440 teams entered preliminary rounds organized by 42 institutions, including central government ministries and local governments, this year. That was an increase of approximately 93% from the 3,856 teams that participated last year. Of the 111 teams that passed the preliminary rounds held by individual institutions, 63 teams in the Idea Planning category and 48 teams in the Product and Service Development category presented their ideas and demonstrated their products or services in the integrated final round.
MOIS attributed the sharp increase in participation to technological advances such as generative AI and conversational coding. It explained that the barrier to developing services using public data had fallen as new environments made it possible to quickly turn ideas into prototypes, even without advanced development skills.
This year saw an increase in entries in the multimodal services category, which combines generative AI with computer vision to analyze visual data such as satellite images and technical drawings. Other services used optical character recognition (OCR) and object-recognition technologies to analyze text and visual information together, while some incorporated generative AI into public-data-based recommendation algorithms and the summarization and analysis of administrative documents.
Five teams from each of the Idea Planning and Product and Service Development categories advanced to the grand finals. The Idea Planning category included a digital health service that uses public data and AI to manage cancer survivors' fear of recurrence, a platform that links unserved school meal food with support for vulnerable groups, and a service that helps small and medium-sized enterprises with everything from diagnosing export risks to preparing certification and customs documents.
The Product and Service Development category selected a service in which AI cross-searches public data from multiple institutions needed for health insurance claims and reviews, a disease-control system that diagnoses and predicts the risk of livestock infectious diseases in real time, and a system that checks school business plans for compliance against national laws and local ordinances.
The grand finals will be held in November at Goyang's Korea International Exhibition Center (KINTEX). MOIS will support the advancing teams with refining their business plans, attracting investment, advancing their use of AI and strengthening their presentation skills. The final winners will receive a total of 10 awards, including two Presidential Awards and two Prime Minister's Awards, along with a combined prize of 100 million won.
Kim Min-jae, Vice Minister of the Interior and Safety, said, "We confirmed that advanced technologies such as generative AI and multimodal systems are combining with public data to evolve into services that people can experience in their daily lives. We will provide support so that the achievements identified through this competition can lead to new startups and stronger national competitiveness."

[email protected] Lee Bo-mi Reporter