SnapScale Raises Seed Investment From Three Firms, Including KAIST Youth Startup Investment
Tech startup SnapScale, which is leading design automation in the plant and EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) industry, said Tuesday that it has secured seed funding from three firms: KAIST Youth Startup Investment Holding Company, POSTECH Technology Holding Company, and Base Ventures. The round reflects an evaluation of SnapScale’s standout technical capabilities and market potential, as well as its commercialization track record—winning paid customers from the early stages of the company.
Built by engineers who hail from POSTECH, Seoul National University, and Korea University, SnapScale is developing AutoFlow, a generative AI solution specialized for manufacturing that automates labor-intensive manual work at plant-design sites. In addition, a panel of senior advisors with extensive experience at global engineering companies at home and abroad has joined the effort to support product development and business strategy, further strengthening its expertise.
AutoFlow, the company’s core solution, runs by adding a prompt window on top of the CAD environment that engineers already use. The advantage is that, without switching to any separate system, AI can handle tasks such as writing design documents, revising them, and reviewing them. Designed to closely match real workflows based on in-depth interviews with 75 engineers at sites in Korea and overseas, the system processes all data within the client company’s infrastructure, enabling a safe rollout without security concerns. Recognizing this technological innovation and marketability, SnapScale also won the Early-Stage Startup Track prize at the 2025 Jeongju-young Entrepreneurship Competition hosted by the Asan Nanum Foundation last year.
Currently, SnapScale has secured four customer companies and is actively running multiple proof-of-concept (PoC) projects with various firms. By collaborating with different types of customers across the value chain—including EPC companies, vendors, and public institutions—the company is focusing on product upgrades with the goal of automating the entire EPC cycle, from procurement and construction to design stages. Using this round as a springboard, the company plans to expand its research and development workforce and convert ongoing PoCs into formal deployments to grow successful references at industrial sites.
SnapScale CEO Kim Sang-yoon said, “Plant design, which can take years depending on scale, has been a bottleneck determining the speed of the entire industry, but it was a problem that no one has properly solved so far,” adding, “We will drive a productivity breakthrough that customers can feel from day one of adoption through AI that runs directly on the tools field engineers use every day.”
An Jun-hyun, managing director of KAIST Youth Startup Investment Holding Company, which led the investment, said, “The approach itself—structuring the tacit knowledge held by senior engineers at plant design sites into an AI-understandable ontology—is a unique moat even in the closed plant design domain,” and “We expect the company to grow into a leader that will set the pace in the global plant design automation market, beyond Korea’s EPC sector,” explaining the rationale behind the investment.
Kim Sang-yoon, who started out as a student entrepreneur and successfully led incorporation, generated early sales, and now secured this seed investment, is driven by a clear mission to use AI to overhaul inefficiencies in the plant industry that have long gone unsolved. SnapScale is paying attention to the fact that the biggest bottleneck blocking the commercialization of eco-friendly technologies essential for addressing the climate crisis—such as carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), hydrogen, and next-generation batteries—lies in the slow pace and high cost of plant design. Based on this, the company presents a mid- to long-term vision to implement design automation and optimization, contributing to faster climate-crisis solutions and faster commercialization of technology for human civilization.
