Naver Webtoon, a content distributing subsidiary of South Korea’s biggest portal Naver Corp., acquired local artificial intelligence (AI) startup V.DO that has been supported by Naver’s startup accelerator D2 Startup Factory (D2SF), the company announced Tuesday.

Financial terms for the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 2017, V.DO has developed various AI-backed solutions including golf swing analysis program, multi CCTV analysis and multi-code recognition with wide-ranging support from Naver including financial investment, cloud infrastructure, business consulting and marketing.

Naver Webtoon plans to step up its efforts to strengthen content competitiveness in cooperation with the newly joined talents from V.DO using the startup’s various technologies such as AI and computer vision, a technology enabling machines to see like human.

D2SF has been supporting more than 40 promising startups since its foundation in 2015 to seek technology cooperation with Naver. V.DO is the third D2SF-groomed startups to be acquired by bigger companies.

By Oh Dae-seok and Choi Mira

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