# A world that competes on product value, not company size > Grinda AI is a B2B AI agent company founded in Daejeon, South Korea in 2023. The founder's story, what we believe about AI, how we work, and our history. Canonical: https://grinda.ai/en/about Last updated: 2026-09-29 Too many great products stop at the border. Grinda AI uses AI agents to lower that threshold. - **2023** — Founded in Daejeon, Korea - **17 languages** — Buyer discovery & outreach - **42+** — Government, finance & global partners - **19** — Published industry scenarios ## Why I started this company **Kang Ho-jin** (강호진) — Chief Executive Officer - AI at KAIST - Founded Grinda AI in 2023 - Selected for Korea's TIPS program - Hana Bank Hana1Q Agile Lab, 17th cohort "Our product could sell anywhere in the world." It is the sentence I have heard most often over the past three years. The founders I met in Daejeon, in Busan, in Gwangju all had something worth selling. What they did not have was a way across the border — and the obstacle was never the technology. Hiring one overseas sales rep costs about KRW 50 million a year, and covering seventeen countries meant seventeen of them. I studied AI at KAIST. When we started Grinda AI in Daejeon in March 2023, the first thing we built was a finance-specific LLM. It was good technology, but it was not at the center of the problem we wanted to solve. The more customers we met, the more clearly we saw the real wall: a company with a great product cannot reach the people who would recognize it. So in 2025 we changed direction — from finance AI to B2B global sales. For a founder, a pivot can feel like admitting failure. I see it the other way around. What a customer is blocked by matters more than what we happen to be good at. Keeping that order is the strongest advantage we have. Today Rinda finds buyers in 17 languages and writes proposals in the language and context of each market. The agent takes the repetitive research and drafting; judgment and relationships stay with people. Approving a send and negotiating a contract are always the human's call. Automation, to us, is not replacing a person — it is letting one person do the work of a team. > Ten years from now, I want this sentence to sound ordinary: "A five-person company exports to seventeen countries." Today that is an exception. The moment the exception becomes the default, the map of what a small company can do is redrawn. Grinda AI intends to be part of redrawing it. Chief Executive Officer, Grinda AI · **Kang Ho-jin** ## What we believe about AI Not trends we copied down, but the standards we actually hold ourselves to when we build. ### 01. AI is not a technology for subtracting people We do not define automation as headcount reduction. Repetitive research, translation, and drafting go to the agent; judgment and relationships stay with people. Approving a send and negotiating a contract are always the human's call. ### 02. Language is no longer a market border Rinda finds buyers in 17 languages and pitches in the context of each market. That is localization, not translation. A border should not stand in the way of a product's value. ### 03. An agent has to be work, not a demo A good demo impresses you for five minutes; a good agent shows up every morning. We only call something a product when it enters a real workflow and leaves results behind. ### 04. The next gap is access, not models The best models are already available to everyone. The gap opens between companies that can connect those models to their own work and companies that cannot. We stand on the side that closes it. ### And what we don't do We think what a company refuses to claim describes it as much as what it sells. - We do not inflate results. Every public figure on this site is published with its definition, formula, and reference date. - We do not claim AI closes the deal. Approving a send and negotiating a contract are done by people. - We do not present certifications we do not hold. We design and operate our security program with reference to ISO/IEC 27001 controls. ## How we work Not lines for a job posting, but rules we actually keep week to week. ### Small team, large leverage We try automation before we add people. The structure where one person carries a team's load is something we prove on ourselves first. **In practice:** Before discussing a new hire, we ask whether an agent could do the job first. ### We are our own first customer We find our own overseas partners with Rinda and produce our own content with our own automation. We do not sell features we do not use. **In practice:** Everything is wired into Grinda's real sales and marketing work before it ships. ### Proof over claims We trust the result of a PoC more than the persuasiveness of a deck. A customer's actual outcome is the only language we speak. **In practice:** Most adoption conversations start as a small experiment that finishes within one to two weeks. ### Every number carries its source A company whose public figures change from page to page is hard to trust. So we manage numbers the way we manage code. **In practice:** Every public figure is registered with its definition, formula, and reference date, and verified automatically before release. ### Global from day one We do not build a domestic version and an overseas version. Global is the default, not something bolted on later. **In practice:** The site runs in 5 languages, and outreach runs in 17 by default. ### We stay until it works Delivery is not the finish line; results are. We do not hand over a tool and call the project done. **In practice:** Diagnose → Design → PoC → Adoption. Our scope ends when the customer holds the result. ## Changing direction is also growth Three years of leaving something that worked for a bigger problem. ### 2023 — Starting in Daejeon - Grinda AI Inc. founded (March) - Seed round closed (May) - Selected for the Ministry of SMEs and Startups' TIPS program (November) - R&D begins on an in-house LLM supporting 17 languages and finance-specific AI ### 2024 — Validating product and market - Exhibited AI solutions at CES 2024 - Runner-up at a global generative AI hackathon - AI solution supply partnership with MINKABU (Japan) - Joined Seoul Fintech Lab (August) - Built 'STOCK AI' and automation solutions for financial institutions ### 2025 — Pivoting to the bigger problem - Strategic pivot: from finance AI to B2B global sales - 'Rinda' unveiled at KITA's generative AI trends seminar (May) - 'Rinda', the AI B2B global sales agent, officially launched (May) - MOUs signed with BNK System and Gwangju Metropolitan City - Selected as a supplier for Gwangju's AI Voucher program (September) - Major Rinda relaunch as a 'global sales AI copilot' (September) ### 2026 — Expanding the lineup and partners - Selected for Hana Bank's Hana1Q Agile Lab, 17th cohort (March) - Released a dedicated AI Document OCR solution for scanned and handwritten documents - Running the AX (AI Transformation) program: Diagnose → Design → PoC → Adoption ## The people behind Grinda Sales, product, design, and data move as one team. ### Leadership - **Kang Ho-jin** (Chief Executive Officer) — Studied AI at KAIST and founded Grinda AI in 2023. He has spent since then turning one hypothesis into a product: that AI agents can carry the load of an entire overseas sales team. - **Kim Jung-tae** (Chief Operating Officer) — Part of the leadership team from the earliest days, connecting product and business operations so that customer adoption and partnerships turn into real outcomes. ### Teams - **Product · Engineering** — Designs and builds the AI agents and automation pipelines — turning buyer discovery, outreach, and analysis into shipped product. - **AI · Data** — Researches the 17-language models and data pipelines, experimenting constantly for more accurate discovery and response. - **Growth · Operations** — Owns customer adoption and outcomes. The front line connecting sales, support, and content. ## Company facts The details procurement and legal teams ask for, published up front. - **Legal name:** Grinda AI Inc. (주식회사 그린다에이아이) - **Founded:** March 2023 - **CEO:** Kang Ho-jin - **Headquarters:** #503, 99 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, South Korea (Daejeon TIPS Town) - **Business registration:** 309-88-02709 - **E-commerce registration:** 2024-Daejeon Yuseong-0389 - **Supported languages:** 5 · Korean, English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Indonesian - **Contact:** hogingpt@grinda.ai Definitions and calculation bases for every public figure are published with their reference dates in the answer hub. [See the citable key figures](https://grinda.ai/en/answers#facts) ## Related - [Grinda AI](https://grinda.ai/en) - [AI Transformation](https://grinda.ai/en/ax) - [Rinda](https://grinda.ai/en/products/rinda) - [See the citable key figures](https://grinda.ai/en/answers#facts)