Street to CES 2026: GBSA Roadmap for the Subsequent Excessive-Tech Leap

The Gyeonggi Business & Science Accelerator, or GBSA, is a non-profit group funded by South Korea’s Gyeonggi Province (map link) that provides tailor-made assist—comparable to mentoring, workspace, funding, and international networking—to modern 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, comparable to CES 2026. (Photograph courtesy of Aving Information Community)

One in all GBSA’s key sectors is mobility, which within the context of the automotive trade refers to applied sciences and companies that allow the motion of individuals and items—suppose electrical autos, autonomous driving, shared-ride companies, and the infrastructure that helps them.

In Pangyo, GBSA has helped launch a real-road autonomous driving testbed referred to as “Pangyo Zero Metropolis,” a objective‑constructed, actual‑world testing surroundings 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 features as an open platform, real-world lab, the place self-driving autos (ADVs) and associated mobility companies might 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 varied autonomous mobility applied sciences, and display their security to the inhabitants to induce sooner acceptance.

To attempt issues even sooner, there’s the SHARK digital twin simulation platform (SHARK stands for Seongnam Excessive-tech Autonomous Street FrameworK). With it, startups, universities and analysis institutes can just about put autonomous automobiles, drones and robots by 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 facet by facet on collaborative R&D initiatives after which take their prototypes straight into reside testing on close by roads and services.

GBSA additionally locations a powerful 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 development mannequin. Corporations can transfer from seed-stage incubation to scale-up by custom-made areas, structured mentoring applications, and occasions like “Pan-Pan Day,” (see video under) 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 part opened as an R&D hub for IT, biotech, and cultural expertise. The second valley was designated in November 2015 to develop this innovation cluster, with its first part accomplished in late 2019 to herald extra startups and mid-sized companies. The third valley was slated for completion by 2022. Immediately, 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 sources they should thrive in high-tech fields. It’ll carve out devoted clusters for system semiconductor and fabless design corporations, providing every part from lab area to hands-on innovation assist. On the similar time, future mobility companies—engaged on autonomous driving, drones, AI and robotics—will achieve entry to real-world testbeds and verification infrastructure to allow them to refine their applied sciences in real looking settings.

And since at this time’s most fun concepts typically mix gaming, ICT (Data and Communication Expertise) and different superior IT applied sciences, there might be loads of alternatives for builders in these areas to faucet into networking occasions, technical workshops and shared workspaces designed to spark collaboration.

That mentioned, different sectors are additionally welcome: bio-health ventures with specialised services and mentorship applications tailor-made to medical and life sciences analysis. Renewable vitality startups, particularly these centered on solar energy, will discover growth-stage funding and growth assist.

In 2024, quite a bit was achieved: Pangyo Techno Valleys 1 and a pair of are residence to 1,803 corporations, marking an (+11% development YoY). It now counts 79,000 staff, for which 60% are of their 20s and 30s amongst whom 32.6% are Researchers. Ladies signify 29.8% of the workforce, which is similar 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 quite a lot of Pangyo TV startups who’ve foreigner CEOs, and that’s one thing entrepreneurs worldwide ought to consider for the present or subsequent enterprise. Would they be higher off with the experience and assist discovered within the Pangyo TV? That’s a query value asking, and assembly the GBSA group at CES ought to be a high networking precedence for some startups.

Filed in General. Learn extra about CES, Korea and Startups.