Shinhan GIB, an investment banking unit of South Korea’s Shinhan Financial Group, pooled $20 million through a private equity fund (PEF) formed jointly with Smilegate Investment to invest in Moloco and contribute in grooming the Silicon Valley-based ad platform powered by machine learning to a unicorn with $1 billion valuation.

Founded in 2013 by Ahn Ik-jin, Moloco maximizes advertising effect through machine learning system that automatically selects and analyzes advertising targets. Its customers around the globe can expose their brands more than 7.5 billion times per month via more than 4 billion devices. Its advertising effectiveness is widely recognized through a number of marketing analytics firms including Appsflyer, Kochava and Singluar. Most recently, it was named the best media source by 2021 Singluar ROI Index.

Its founder and CEO Ahn developed YouTube ad algorithm in Google before he started his own business. It is based in Silicon Valley and operates subsidiaries in South Korea, Singapore, Japan, Indonesia and the U.K. It is estimated to have made 100 billion won ($88.9 million) in sales for the first three months of this year, after recording around 200 billion won in sales last year. Korean companies including SK Telecom, LG and Krafton have also joined funding of the company.

Moloco has recently launched Moloco Cloud, ad automation platform that optimizes ad bids. The latest funding will be used in recruiting more engineers for global business expansion and strengthening software and infrastructure.

Shinhan GIB has been on an aggressive hunt for promising startups around the world. It invested in Indonesia’s unicorn e-commerce startup Bukalapak and Europe’s biosimilar producer Alvotech.

By Kang Doo-soon, Park Chang-young and Choi Mira

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