Powerlist 2025: Dong-Su Kim

Dong-Su Kim, CEO of LG Technology Ventures, is one of the 100 leading corporate venturing professionals in our 2025 Powerlist.

Dong-Su Kim founded LG’s corporate venture capital unit in 2018 and has since seen the Silicon Valley-based team grow to 22 professionals overseeing 14 funds, investing across all areas of interest to LG group companies.

Kim focuses on identifying category leaders in transformative technologies, particularly in batteries and AI. “We do more battery-related investments than any other venture capital firm in the world,” says Kim. This dovetails with parent company LG’s interests, particularly LG Energy Solutions, a global supplier of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, energy storage and mobile devices.

“LG Group is investing heavily in the transformation of energy,” says Kim. Despite a recent slowdown in the EV market, the company remains committed to investing in batteries, including backing some long-shot technologies such as sodium-ion batteries.

Meanwhile, LG Technology Ventures is helping LG explore new markets such as humanoid robotics, taking part in the $675m series B funding round for Figure AI last year. The investment has already led to a collaboration between Figure AI and LG’s battery division, which sees the burgeoning humanoid robotics industry as a new customer base. There is also potential for LG’s cameras and sensors to be used in this industry.

“When people sign onto the fund, they know this is a long-term commitment.”

“There is a lot of learning on both sides that is very beneficial,” says Kim.

On AI, LG Technology Ventures backed the large language model developer Anthropic. Now, however, Kim is focusing on the application side of AI, recently investing in Cresta Labs, which uses AI for call centre automation, and 11 Labs, an AI voice generation startup.

“The cost of AI is decreasing and people are developing better techniques that use less computing to train these models. You can make very good applications at a lower cost. Some of these companies are now making money from the technology,” says Kim.

The team makes around 20 investments annually and Kim expects this pace to continue. He puts the CVC unit’s success down to strong LG leadership support. “When people sign onto the fund, they know this is a long-term commitment,” says Kim.

- Originally published at https://globalventuring.com/corporate/awards/powerlist-2025-dong-su-kim/ | June 17 2025