Wrtn Technologies, a South Korean start-up that takes comic book characters off the page and into real-time unscripted engagement with fans, is an exception to the rule in a largely US-centric artificial intelligence (AI) universe, according to Jin Oh, a partner at Goodwater Capital.

“About 70% of our AI deal flow is in the US. That’s where most of the innovation is happening, and it’s where we see the application layer coming. As for the other 30%, when you look at Asia as a region, there isn’t a consumer service in AI growing as fast as Wrtn,” he said.

“It’s comparable to opportunities we are seeing in the US. That’s what grabbed our attention because we evaluate deals on a global benchmark.”

Goodwater first backed Wrtn via a KRW 108bn (USD 80m) Series B in March 2025, six months after the start-up moved into interactive character AI chat. It recently joined a KRW 100bn Series C – at a KRW 1trn-plus valuation – alongside Coreline Ventures, Eugene Asset Management, Antler Global, Woori Venture Partners, Sui Generis Partners, Korea Development Bank, and Capstone Partners.

In between these funding rounds, Wrtn expanded from Korea (where the service is known as Crack) into Japan (Kyarapu) and the US (OOC). After just four months, the company claims to be generating KRW 10bn in monthly revenue in the US. According to Oh, this has helped push the overall revenue run rate to USD 200m, up from USD 18m at the time of the Series B.

“It is growing at 10% per day in the US right now, mind-blowingly fast,” he added. “Most of the latest round was covered by existing investors that wanted to double down. But the pipeline of investors Wrtn is now talking to is prestigious. Big names are all around it.”

Custom made

Wrtn’s platform is often referred to as “playable anime” because it turns the viewer into the protagonist: placing them into an imagined world in which they communicate with characters directly and their choices shape the direction of the narrative.

For the viewer, it makes for a richer user experience as static stories become interactive – a cross between reading a comic and playing a game. For creators, it’s a more efficient process because worlds are built within Wrtn in a fraction of the time required to produce anime and webtoons.

“A webtoon might do well on a webtoon platform, but it takes six months to create. You must construct the narrative, devise the characters, draw out everything,” said Oh. “With Wrtn, in one month you can predefine each character and what type of role they’re going to play, and it goes out on the open market. Then you go off and create other worlds, while continuing to collect residuals.”

As a provider of the tools to build these worlds and – via established distribution networks – the audiences that inhabit them, Wrtn receives a majority share of revenue from each transaction. Goodwater claims that individual users across Korea, Japan, and the US spend more than USD 100 per month consuming content on the platform.

Its competitive edge is based on incumbency, technology, and cultural tradition. First, the company was an early mover in making entertainment a specialisation. To date, more than one million worlds have been built by thousands of content creators using Crack, Kyarapu or OOC.

Second, Wrtn has learned which large language models (LLMs) best fit its purposes. “Whether it’s Anthropic, OpenAI, Kimi or Gemini, they are good at determining which models, and which versions of those models, are good at different tasks,” Oh explained.

Third, while AI facilitates the interactive element, Wrtn’s business model is underpinned by storytelling traditions characteristic of manga and anime, as well as the high-volume, rapid-validation content consumption habits of Japan and Korea. The company’s traction in the US is seen as inextricably linked to the widespread popularity of content from these two Asian markets.

An AI export

Consequently, Oh is sceptical about the prospect of a Wrtn equivalent emerging outside the region, observing that “the mindset and the muscle memory isn’t there.” Nor can AI hope to fill the gap. “AI is not the creative brain that predicts what is popular next; it comes from a 70-year-old ecosystem that’s hard to replicate,” he said, noting that Wrtn’s most popular content is human-generated.

In this sense, Wrtn demonstrates that Korea’s slice of the AI value chain encompasses cultural exports as well as semiconductors and robotics. Goodwater played into the theme last year with an investment in b.stage, a platform used by many K-pop artists to build independent fan communities and create digital monetisation opportunities.

“Globally, consumer applications for AI are just now starting to take off because the infrastructure is more stable and the barriers or costs to starting a company are falling,” Oh said. “There are no geographical limitations because you can start a service from anywhere in the world, but Korea is very good at content. It has been human-led, and now AI is accelerating it.”