Naver D2SF Invests in Vandal AI and Cnaps.AI

Seoul, South Korea - Naver D2SF, the venture investment division of Naver Corporation, announced investments in two artificial intelligence companies on Thursday: Vandal AI and Cnaps.AI.

The investments focus on companies working in content licensing infrastructure and AI model integration.

Vandal AI runs Cashmere, a platform that streamlines licensing agreements between content publishers and AI developers.

The system allows publishers to maintain intellectual property controls while giving AI companies authorized access to content for large language model training and search enhancement.

The platform uses a proprietary content format called OmniPub.

According to company statements, this format enables token-level management functions, including access controls, permission assignments, usage monitoring, and revenue distribution.

Vandal AI was founded in 2025 and has partnered with publishers including John Wiley & Sons and Harvard Business Publishing.

The company also works with AI firms, including Perplexity.

The seed funding round included capital from Reach Capital, Ingram Content Group, and Naver D2SF.

Cnaps.AI specializes in AI workflow automation through a process the company calls intelligence mapping, which matches AI models to specific tasks based on performance and cost.

The company launched Cnaps Studio this year, which currently works with approximately 50 AI models for text and image processing.

Cnaps.AI said it updates its model library biweekly and plans to add support for audio, video, and three-dimensional content.

The company's team includes former employees from Nvidia, Google Research, and gaming companies.

The investment marks Cnaps.AI's first institutional funding round. Naver D2SF led the round, with participation from Bluepointe Partners, Laguna Investment, and Pebble Fund.

Yang Sang-hwan, head of Naver D2SF, stated that Cashmere converts content into formats compatible with AI systems while Cnaps.

AI builds infrastructure for AI model optimization. Naver D2SF said it will continue evaluating early-stage companies developing foundational AI technologies in 2025.