Bunkerkids, a Seoul-based startup behind the AI romance chat app WHIF, closed a ₩2 billion funding round (roughly $1.3 million) from Crit Ventures on Tuesday, less than a year after launching a product that seems to have cracked a stubborn problem in consumer AI: keeping people coming back.
The company says paying users are spending an average of 217 minutes daily with the app, a figure that appeared in coverage by MoneyToday and later echoed by Kakao Ventures, an earlier investor, on LinkedIn in late July. That's more than three and a half hours a day chatting with AI characters drawn from licensed Korean webtoons and web novels, mostly centered on romance and boys' love storylines. WHIF went live in July 2025 across South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. Nearly three out of every ten revenue dollars now come from overseas, according to Asia Business Daily's reporting on the round.
Operating profitability within nine months is an unusual milestone for a consumer app, particularly one built around generative AI and its attendant infrastructure costs. Monthly payments grew at an average clip of 110% during WHIF's first nine months, the company told multiple Korean business outlets. On its own careers portal, Bunkerkids claims 77% weekly payment retention, though that metric is self-reported and hasn't been verified independently.
The app crossed 500,000 installs on Google Play as of August 10, with a rating of 3.6 across more than 5,600 reviews. Users can subscribe to a "Master Key" monthly plan priced at ¥2,000 in Japan, where the app is available in English, Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Traditional Chinese. The interface allows people to interact with licensed characters through a "Couple Room" feature and to build custom AI personas that can generate revenue for their creators.
This is not Bunkerkids' first rodeo. Founded in October 2020 and accepted into Korea's TIPS incubator program the following November, the company previously built and sold two AI products: Data Diving, an education service, and MyShipDan, a meal recommendation and delivery platform. In December 2022, Bunkerkids raised ₩2 billion in a Series A led by Kakao Ventures, with Spring Camp and Rising S Ventures participating, to fund MyShipDan. After offloading that product, CEO Jung Seung-wan pivoted the 19-person team toward interactive AI content. Five of those employees are developers, including CTO Son Jun-hyeok. The executive roster also includes CPO Sora Ryu and COO Ed Park. Jung studied at Chung-Ang University.
Under the hood, WHIF uses what the company describes as a "three-layer memory" system, designed to preserve continuity across conversations and nudge story arcs forward. The architecture is meant to make interactions feel less repetitive, a challenge that has plagued chatbot experiences since their earliest iterations.
"As AI technology advances, what matters more than the model itself is content that keeps users engaged and compelling IP competitiveness," Jung said in Asia Business Daily's coverage.
Lim Yong-muk, a partner at Crit Ventures, framed the investment around a broader shift he sees in how people consume media. Generative AI is moving content "from simply viewing and reading to users directly participating and creating," he wrote, according to MoneyToday. He pointed to Bunkerkids' development capabilities as positioning the company for global content markets, though he didn't specify which geographies might be next.
The startup plans to deploy the fresh capital toward international expansion, building on its existing footholds in Taiwan and Thailand. Whether WHIF can sustain its engagement metrics as it scales remains an open question. Consumer AI apps have a history of sharp initial enthusiasm followed by steep drop-offs once novelty fades. For now, though, the numbers suggest that pairing generative AI with familiar IP and romance narratives has found an audience willing to pay, and to stick around.
