DATA ALLIANCE, a South Korean deep-tech startup, has closed an approximately $1.95M USD(KRW 3 billion) Pre-Series A funding round at a valuation of about $15.3M USD(KRW 23.5 billion). The company was also selected for the Ministry of SMEs and Startups’ Deep-tech Startup 1000+ Project (DIPS ; Deep-tech Incubator Project for Startup) in the AI category.
DIPS is a government initiative designed to identify and intensively support high-potential startups with strong technological capabilities in emerging industries with global competitiveness. DATAALLIANCE earned its spot in the program through the recognized innovation of its distributed GPU Cloud platform, gcube.
gcube combines distributed systems technology with a shared-economy model to deliver a non-ownership virtual GPU cloud platform. Compared to conventional centralized cloud services dominated by big tech providers, gcube offers up to 90% cost reduction. On an RTX 5090-based environment, it also delivers up to 34% better inference performance than the A100. The platform’s intellectual property is protected by patents registered in eight countries, including South Korea, the United States, China, and Germany.
The company has built a strong track record on the awards circuit: it won the Innovation Award in the AI category at CES 2026, followed by recognition at the Global AI Impact Awards and the World IT Show (WIS 2026), where it received the Grand Prize for Innovative Products and New Technologies. Since establishing operations at the Seoul Startup Hub Seongsu, DATA ALLIANCE has accumulated cumulative revenue of approximately KRW 2.75 billion (approximately $1.79M USD).
On the research and partnerships front, the company is collaborating with the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) on AI infrastructure joint research, and has integrated GPU clusters with the Korea Automotive Technology Institute, reflecting a broad base of public-private-academic partnerships.
“With this DIPS selection and Pre-Series A funding secured, we aim to position gcube as the most rational distributed GPU cloud alternative for AI companies worldwide that are struggling with the high cost of GPU infrastructure — and to establish DATA ALLIANCE as a leading player in the global AI infrastructure market,” the company said.
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