ZER01NE Ventures: The place where startups get down to business
7 minute read
What happens when you unleash creative forces across multiple disciplines and give creative minds the support and financial backing they need to bring their visions to life? The answer: You get ZER01NE, the open innovation platform from Hyundai Motor Group, where game-changing ingenuity gets its groove on! The platform's philosophy is to foster the disruptive power of creativity and its role as a driving force behind human-centered innovation. To support the growth of creative ecosystems, ZER01NE focuses on three pillars, ART, TECH, and BIZ, and invests in promising startups and creators at the cross-section of art and technology.
The prime objective of the TECH pillar of ZER01NE is to invest in startup collaborations that can benefit humanity. That is where ZER01NE Ventures comes into play. As an amalgam of Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) and Open Innovation (OI), ZER01NE Ventures connects creators of breakthrough technology with concrete business opportunities and financial backing. The program comprises four sectors: ZER01NE COMPANY BUILDER, ZER01NE ACCELERATOR, ZER01NE FUND, and Hyundai CRADLE.
A goal of ZER01NE is to create a flourishing ecosystem of diverse talent from art and design to tech, science and business. ZER01NE organizer
COMPANY BUILDER gives internal talent its wings
Talent is an essential company resource, and any employee can come up with a game-changing idea. COMPANY BUILDER is based on incentivizing employees to follow their ideas and establish new companies that can further benefit business and society.
As Hyundai Motor Group's in-house startup program, COMPANY BUILDER allows employees with innovative ideas to start their own businesses by providing in-house incubation and acceleration. Any employee with potential business ideas based on technology and know-how accumulated through their careers can present their ideas for evaluation and possible realization. If selected and after one year of development, their ideas undergo spin-off deliberation.
COMPANY BUILDER is primarily guided by the requirements defined by top management and company-wide needs. COMPANY BUILDER is an intra-preneurship for HMC employees but is planned to expand to extra-preneurship for those outside the company.
We are excited to work with so many new innovative companies whose development we helped initiate. Hyundai Representative
ACCELERATOR offers collaboration opportunities for external startups and internal teams
Every good idea needs a boost, which is why ACCELERATOR is the perfect place to get started. ZER01NE ACCELERATOR is a strategic accelerator program designed to foster direct connections between startups and internal teams within Hyundai Motor Group.
ZER01NE ACCELERATOR identifies internal needs for new business and technology development initiatives directly from various business units, turning these needs into startup challenges that are incorporated into open calls. The main goal is to validate the feasibility of new business and technology applications. Since its launch in 2018, ZER01NE ACCELERATOR has built a network of over 180 startup cohorts and facilitated 130 collaborative projects in partnership with 150 business units across 11 group affiliates.
ZER01NE FUND brings financial backing to the table
Helping nurture promising future-oriented startups and technologies requires sufficient investment capital. The ZER01NE FUND enables that and much more. The ZER01NE FUND focuses on investing in promising startups that show great potential yet need further support to develop their services and products. Through open collaboration, mutually beneficial partnerships are established in crucial growth sectors ranging from artificial intelligence & machine learning to micro-mobility. A unique aspect of the ZER01NE FUND is that some startups chosen for further collaboration might not immediately be relevant to the HMG but hold great future potential. In this way, the ZER01NE FUND helps to further democratize technological investment for greater opportunity and progress for humanity.
Hyundai CRADLE Hubs rock the global innovation scene
ZER01NE’s uniqueness lies in the scope of the innovative community it has built. An important arm of this community is the global network of Hyundai CRADLE offices around the world, which serves as regional hubs for sourcing and sensing world’s finest talent and technologies. Located strategically in Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Beijing, and Singapore, Hyundai CRADLE offers startups and innovators worldwide exposure and opportunities to collaboratively advance the future of mobility. This global scope of work greatly strengthens ZER01NE’s presence in the field of open innovation, giving HMG a strong edge that is hard to imitate.
Strong partners as proof
With ZER01NE, we are committed to promoting all innovators whose ideas and services drive human progress. Since its beginning, ZER01NE has helped hundreds of startups realize their visions and enjoy successful business partnerships with us and our affiliates. ZER01NE’s investment portfolio reflects just this success of the fund, examples of which include companies like Narnia Labs, Terracle, and Deep Insight.
Narnia Labs develops generative AI-based product design and engineering solutions for manufacturing industries. Since 2022, ZER01NE has been working with Narnia Labs from the company-building stage, tackling the salient issue of shortage in 3D data. Narnia Labs developed the technology to generate and evaluate 3D data for AI training, effectively reducing time and costs in product design.
Terracle develops chemical procedures for recycling PET (waste plastic depolymerization) for further use in the automotive industry. Ever since ZER01NE's investment, Hyundai Motor Company and Terrace have been working together to build capacity for recycling plastic in cars, realizing a closed-loop process for car production.
Deep Insight creates 3D sensing solutions based on artificial intelligence and was supported through the ZER01NE accelerator program in 2022. Their concept of utilizing sensing technology to transform car user experience, such as face and gesture recognition, convinced ZER01NE that they were the right partner for the job.
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