Series Ventures Makes Seed Investment in AI Video Startup The Manta Story

Series Ventures, an accelerator focused on South Korea's southeastern region and led by co-chief executives Kwak Sung-wook and Park Jun-sang, said on October 6 that it had completed a seed investment in The Manta Story (더만타스토리), a company developing a Korean AI video generation engine for long-form commercial productions. The company is led by chief executive Jung Hwang-soo. The amount was not disclosed.

The video market is growing as global streaming services expand and demand for Korean content rises, but falling cinema attendance and sharply higher production budgets are increasing pressure to cut costs on set. The cost of a single episode of a streaming drama has risen over several years from around 1 billion won to about 3 billion won. Visual effects are the heaviest segment: the work is labour-intensive, with dozens of people assigned for several months, making it the biggest drain on budgets and staffing.

theROAD is the AI video generation engine The Manta Story developed in-house. Through a pipeline that runs from script input to AI image generation, the stitching of video sequences and final review, it allows a small team to carry out visual-effects work that previously took dozens of people several months. In measurements the company made when applying the system to its own productions, it cut production time and cost by up to 70%.

What separates the system from general-purpose AI tools is the training data. The Manta Story fine-tuned its model on its own library of intellectual property assets, reducing copyright risk, and uses it to produce material that can be delivered commercially.

The Manta Story has 25 years of production experience, including visual-effects work on the films "Train to Busan," "Peninsula" and "JUNG_E," and holds seven patents related to AI and digital twins. Working out of the Busan AI Tech Studio, it has an industry-academia agreement with Dongseo University under which it trains local staff and places them on productions. The company's goal is to extend an AI production process already proven in short-form video to long-form work such as films and drama series.

"The Manta Story is a team that solves the copyright and quality problems general-purpose tools have not solved, using 25 years of production experience and its own AI technology," said Kwak Sung-wook and Park Jun-sang, the co-chief executives of Series Ventures. "It has strong potential to set a Korean standard in the long-form AI video market."

"Our goal is to use AI to help creators bring their own stories into the world faster and more safely," said Jung Hwang-soo, chief executive of The Manta Story. "On the basis of this investment, we will further develop infrastructure for Korean-style long-form AI video production that is free of copyright concerns."