Serialized fiction app Radish raises $63.2M Series A led by SoftBank Ventures Asia and Kakao Page
Serialized fiction app Radish landed $63.2 million in Series A funding, led by SoftBank Ventures Asia and Kakao Page, to tap into Hollywood's storytelling community.
Context & Ripple Effects
Radish's $63.2 million round is less notable for its size than for its lead investors: [[/entity/softbank-ventures-asia|SoftBank Ventures Asia]] and Kakao Page, the serialization arm of South Korea's Kakao group, taking a stake in a US app built to feed [[/entity/hollywood|Hollywood]]'s storytelling community. That Korean backing turned out to be a prelude — within nine months, Kakao Entertainment moved from investor to outright owner, acquiring Radish for $440M alongside comic app Tapas for $510M (the twin Tapas-Radish acquisition).
The round also slots into a broader pattern of Korean content platforms funding their way into Western markets: Kakao Entertainment later raised $930M from Saudi Arabia's PIF and Singapore's GIC to scale apps spanning animated shows and novels (Kakao's $930M raise) — capital that traces back to beachheads like this one.
First-order effects
- Radish gets the capital to recruit from Hollywood's writing community, while SoftBank Ventures Asia and Kakao Page convert a venture bet into direct exposure to US serialized fiction.
Second-order effects
- Korean platforms' ownership of a US fiction app pressures competing serialized-reading services to find strategic backers or exit — the path Radish itself took when Kakao bought it at a reported $440M price after leading its Series A.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, mobile-first serialized storytelling consolidates around Korean-backed groups that pair content libraries with distribution apps, turning Western writers' communities into supply pipelines for Asian media conglomerates rather than independent platforms.
The trend: Korean media groups are using early-stage investments in Western content apps as on-ramps to full acquisition and cross-market consolidation.