The Gyeonggi Enterprise & Science Accelerator, or GBSA, is a non-profit group funded by South Korea’s Gyeonggi Province (map hyperlink) that provides tailor-made help—corresponding to mentoring, workspace, funding, and international networking—to progressive startups and small-to-medium enterprises within the area. GBSA focuses on fostering specialised, high-growth industries and getting ready a few of its individuals for international phases, corresponding to CES 2026. (Picture courtesy of Aving Information Community)
One among GBSA’s key sectors is mobility, which within the context of the automotive trade refers to applied sciences and providers that allow the motion of individuals and items—assume electrical automobiles, autonomous driving, shared-ride providers, and the infrastructure that helps them.
In Pangyo, GBSA has helped launch a real-road autonomous driving testbed often called “Pangyo Zero Metropolis,” a objective‑constructed, actual‑world testing setting for autonomous driving applied sciences, full with a ten.8 km route and IoT infrastructure for testing mobility applied sciences (V2X, sensors and so forth.) alongside common site visitors. It capabilities as an open platform, real-world lab, the place self-driving automobiles (ADVs) and associated mobility providers could be developed, examined, and validated earlier than full-scale market launch.
It’s hoped that such an open (to many enterprises) proving floor will assist speed up the event of assorted autonomous mobility applied sciences, and show their security to the inhabitants to induce quicker acceptance.
To strive issues even quicker, there’s the SHARK digital twin simulation platform (SHARK stands for Seongnam Excessive-tech Autonomous Highway FrameworK). With it, startups, universities and analysis institutes can just about put autonomous vehicles, drones and robots by means of their paces in a digital twin of the actual world. In Pangyo Techno Valley, these similar innovators—specializing in self-driving methods, aerial drones and robotics—work aspect by aspect on collaborative R&D tasks after which take their prototypes straight into reside testing on close by roads and amenities.
GBSA additionally locations a robust emphasis on the startup ecosystem rising across the third Pangyo Techno Valley. Right here, startups, giant firms, public establishments, universities, and analysis institutes work collectively in a step-by-step progress mannequin. Corporations can transfer from seed-stage incubation to scale-up by means of personalized areas, structured mentoring applications, and occasions like “Pan-Pan Day,” (see video beneath) and entry to public-private accelerators. This natural convergence creates a virtuous circle: as startups succeed, they appeal to extra expertise, funding, and collaboration, which in flip fuels additional innovation.
For these new to the Pangyo Techno Valley (aka Pangyo TV) story, it started in 2011 when the primary section opened as an R&D hub for IT, biotech, and cultural know-how. The second valley was designated in November 2015 to broaden this innovation cluster, with its first section accomplished in late 2019 to herald extra startups and mid-sized companies. The third valley was slated for completion by 2022. In the present day, the general Pangyo Techno Valley, is a key driver of Korea’s tech ecosystem.
Pangyo Techno Valley 3 is devoted to offering cutting-edge startups with the assets they should thrive in high-tech fields. It should carve out devoted clusters for system semiconductor and fabless design corporations, providing all the things from lab house to hands-on innovation help. On the similar time, future mobility companies—engaged on autonomous driving, drones, AI and robotics—will acquire entry to real-world testbeds and verification infrastructure to allow them to refine their applied sciences in reasonable settings.
And since right this moment’s most enjoyable concepts usually mix gaming, ICT (Info and Communication Know-how) and different superior IT applied sciences, there shall be loads of alternatives for builders in these areas to faucet into networking occasions, technical workshops and shared workspaces designed to spark collaboration.
That stated, different sectors are additionally welcome: bio-health ventures with specialised amenities and mentorship applications tailor-made to medical and life sciences analysis. Renewable power startups, particularly these centered on solar energy, will discover growth-stage funding and improvement help.
In 2024, quite a bit was achieved: Pangyo Techno Valleys 1 and a couple of are dwelling to 1,803 corporations, marking an (+11% progress YoY). It now counts 79,000 staff, for which 60% are of their 20s and 30s amongst whom 32.6% are Researchers. Girls characterize 29.8% of the workforce, which is akin to Silicon Valley in California.
GBSA has a world outlook, which is why they’re assembly with worldwide observers like Ubergizmo, and why there’s an emphasis on the upcoming CES 2026. In actual fact, there are even plenty of Pangyo TV startups who’ve foreigner CEOs, and that’s one thing entrepreneurs worldwide ought to think about for the present or subsequent enterprise. Would they be higher off with the experience and help discovered within the Pangyo TV? That’s a query value asking, and assembly the GBSA crew at CES ought to be a high networking precedence for some startups.
