Cognex Corporation, a leading U.S. manufacturer of machine vision systems, has offered to buy Korean artificial intelligence startup SUALAB for an estimated 200 billion won ($168.6 million), marking the biggest U.S. buyout of a Korean venture entity in seven years and also a rare recognition of Korean AI talent.

“SUALAB’s considerable IP, engineering expertise, and extensive market coverage will help us to serve a fast-growing market, primarily in Asia,” Robert J. Willett, chief executive of Cognex, said in a statement, expecting SUALAB’s proprietary deep learning-based vision inspection technology to help deliver more reliable deep learning-based machine vision at a lower cost.

Cognex plans to disclose details about the deal during its third quarter earnings call scheduled on Oct. 28 (ET).

The deal would make it the biggest foreign buyout of a Korean venture company since Intel in 2012 acquired Olaworks, a local mobile recognition and augmented reality system developer, for 35 billion won. SUALAB was founded in 2013 by AI researchers from Seoul National University in Korea. In 2017, it launched Suakit, a deep learning software for machine vision applications. Suakit is a platform that integrates machine vision, a technology that enables computers to see and visualize like a human, and deep learning, a machine learning technique that teaches computers to do what comes naturally to humans. It is being used in manufacturing sites of some of Korea’s largest companies including Samsung Electronics, LG, Hanwha and SK to identify defects, the company said.

“Our goal at SUALAB has been clear since our founding—to be the global leader in deep learning-based vision inspection,” said Song Kiyoung, CEO and co-founder of SUALAB. “By joining Cognex, we have reached that goal, and together, we plan to accelerate our efforts to help more customers solve even the most complex vision applications faster, easier and more cost-effectively.”

Kim Jin-hyung, professor at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and Korea’s leading AI expert, said the acquisition holds great significance as it comes at a time of feverish AI investment from the government and companies alike.

“It’s important to make strategic investments by finding good business models like SUALAB rather than blindly pouring money into AI,” he added.

He said Korea has world-class talent in AI and saw potential for greater development if more young people enter the field and join the fast-growing startup scene.

By Won Ho-sup and Kim Hyo-jin

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