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Mirae Asset Venture Investment and global accelerator SparkLabs Group announced on the 16th that they have signed a tripartite memorandum of understanding (MOU) and term sheet with Kazakhstan Investment Corporation (hereinafter QIC) to establish the 'Mirae Asset-SparkLabs Silk Road Fund I'.
The signing ceremony took place during the exchange of official documents at the 14th Korea-Kazakhstan Business Council held on the 15th at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul. Kim Eung-seok, Representative Vice Chairman of Mirae Asset Venture Investment; Ivan Grlic, Managing Partner of SparkLabs Group; and Didar Karimsakov, CEO of QIC, signed the agreement.
This agreement was finalized in connection with the 1st Korea-Central Asia Summit being held in Seoul today. A delegation from Baiterek, Kazakhstan's state-owned investment holding company, visited South Korea to align with the summit schedule and held a series of meetings with domestic venture capital institutional investors. Mirae Asset Venture Investment and SparkLabs Group also held separate talks with them on the 14th.
QIC is a state-owned fund of funds under Baiterek, Kazakhstan's state-owned investment holding company, serving as an institutional investor that invests in private venture funds to nurture the country's technology ecosystem. QIC will participate as an anchor limited partner (Anchor LP) in this fund, and its subsidiary BGlobal Ventures will serve as the fund advisor.
Mirae Asset Venture Investment and SparkLabs Group will serve as co-general partners (Co-GP). The investment targets include technology companies in South Korea, Central Asia, the Middle East (MENA), and the United States across the following sectors: △Artificial Intelligence (AI) △Cloud Infrastructure △Enterprise Software △Fintech △Healthcare △Digital Transformation △Mobility.
Mirae Asset Venture Investment has achieved significant investment returns by proactively investing in promising growth industries and related companies based on its exceptional analytical capabilities to identify industry trends. Its key domestic and international portfolio companies expected to go public next year include 'Rebellion' and 'Moloco', while it has also invested in promising domestic firms such as 'Upstage', 'Exyna', 'HyperXcel', and 'RealWorld'.
Internationally, the firm holds a strong portfolio including 'Cohere', a business-specialized AI model company; 'Moonshot AI', a Chinese AI company recently gaining attention for its Kimi series; 'Genspark', an all-in-one AI workspace; and 'Agibot', a Chinese humanoid robot company.
Kim Eung-seok, Representative of Mirae Asset Venture Investment, stated, "This agreement marks the first case where a domestic venture capital firm has jointly established a fund with a Central Asian sovereign wealth institutional investor." He added, "Building on this fund establishment, we will further expand investments in dynamic growth markets such as Central Asia and key global hubs like North America, solidifying our position as a global investor."
Meanwhile, Mirae Asset Venture Investment reported consolidated operating revenue of 139.8 billion won and an operating profit of 37.4 billion won for the first half of this year. This figure already exceeds the full-year operating profit of 35.1 billion won from the previous year.
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