Scatter Lab, a big data analysis company specializing in analyzing chat emotions, announced a series A investment of 1.3 billion won from Softbank Ventures and KTB. Both companies have an equal share in the investment, each investing 650 million won in the company.

Scatter Lab was founded in 2011 as a startup specializing in analyzing emotions, aiming to give people a more valuable chat experience. It now operates a service caller Ginger, which is an artificial intelligence chatting app. Ginger has the ability to generate emotional chatting responses after analyzing the chatting content, and can also respond to different situations.

Created in cooperation with VCNC’s couple-only app Between, Ginger is able to analyze accents, communication patterns, chatting subjects, specific content, and response times. It is able to recognize a user’s life patterns and feelings, after which appropriate information is then provided to the responder.

Examples of Ginger's features include push notifications in response to increases in negative expressions or when it is past the other person's bedtime. Ginger also automatically saves key information from conversational topics such as ‘where to go’ or ‘what to do’ into a wishlist. It analyzes the other party's mental state based on the way they are chatting and suggests ways to adapt to such situations.

Choi Jee Hyun from Softbank Ventures led the investment. He elaborated that “the need for a service that is able to provide beneficial information after analyzing chatting content and is able to recognize the mental state of its counterparts will continually grow.” He further added that growth could “simply be realized in the chatting service market and by extending the service to other text communication services.”

Kim Jong Yoon, CEO of Scatter Lab, said his inspiration for the app Ginger came after watching ‘Her,’ a movie where the main character falls in love with an artificial intelligence being. He revealed that Scatter Lab will use the investment to branch out and diversify the business beyond services for lovers. Scatter Labs also plans to work with other messaging services to add English and Japanese language options.