Korean startup Dtonic, winner of the first edition of South Summit Korea 2024

Madrid . Dtonic, a leading Korean startup in AI and data infrastructures, has emerged as the global winner of the South Summit Korea 2024 Startup Competition, co-organized by IE University, in collaboration with the Government of Gyeonggi and GBSA (Gyenggido Business & Science Accelerator).

With its comprehensive ‘3 layers of Artificial Intelligence’ approach, Dtonic is revolutionizing everything from the Smart Cities sector to retail, while offering cutting-edge solutions in data platforms, Edge Computing and AI applications.

During the closing ceremony of #SouthSummitKorea, which held its first edition between  September 25 and 27 in the Asian country, awards were also given to the Most Disruptive, Most Sustainable, Most Scalable and Best Team startups in the fields of AI and Deep Tech. Thus, the Korean startup, Norma, has won the award for the Most Disruptive startup, while the German Aqarios has been recognized with the award for Best Team, the Israeli VSL Labs has won the award for the Most Sustainable and the Peruvian Tumi Robotics has been distinguished as the Most Scalable.

Over three days, the Korean city of Suwon (Gyeonggi Province) has become the world capital of entrepreneurship and innovation in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and Deep Tech. South Summit Korea 2024 brought together more than 4,000 attendees, as well as 110 expert speakers in these fields. Of these, 43 came from outside the Asian country, and 32% were representatives of startups and scaleups related to these technologies, such as Paddle, LottieFiles, k-ID, Asteroid Technologies, DeepX, Rebellions.AI or TIER IV, among others.

In addition, the event also brought together representatives of large technology companies from Asia and around the world such as AWS, NVIDIA, Rakuten Symphony, Kakao, LinkedIn or Naver Cloud.

María Benjumea, president and founder of South Summit, wanted to highlight that “the globality of South Summit has been reflected during these days, our first time in Korea. The figures prove it: 4,000 attendees from 50 different countries, 1,500 startups, 300 investors and 110 speakers are proof that we connect ecosystems and grow with them”. 

The closing ceremony was led by Nacho Mateo, CEO of South Summit and Juan José Güemes, Vice President of Economics at IE University and president of the IE Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, who highlighted as “IE University is an institution created by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. We have worked with South Summit since its inception to strengthen a global ecosystem of entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe, in America and from now on also in Asia”.

 About South Summit

South Summit is the global platform that brings together all the players in the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem to promote the development of business opportunities among all of them. Its main event is South Summit Madrid, co-organised by IE University, which has hosted more than 42,500 startups in its thirteen previous editions. Its Startup Competition, which has produced 7 unicorns, has generated more than 1,000 finalist startups, with a survival rate of 90% and $16.2 billion in investment raised.

The 13th edition of South Summit Madrid brought together more than 18,000 attendees from 133 countries, including more than 6,500 entrepreneurs, more than 2,000 investors with an investment portfolio exceeding $500 billion -an increase of $174 billion more than last year-, and more than 6,000 corporate representatives from around the world, along with 26 internationally renowned unicorns.

Following visits to Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Argentina, South Summit held its third edition in Brazil, also co-organised with IE University, in March of this year. This edition brought together over 23,500 attendees from 55 countries, including more than 3,000 startups and 900 investment funds. These investors were ready to support the best innovative ideas from around the world, backed by a portfolio of $213 billion. South Summit Brazil is already gearing up for its fourth edition, which will take place between 9 and 11 April 2025.