Samsung Electronics announced that it will showcase 15 C-Lab startups at CES 2026, held January 6-9 in Eureka Park at the Venetian Expo, to support their global market expansion through a dedicated exhibition area featuring innovations in AI, robotics, and digital health.
The C-Lab program, initiated by Samsung in 2012, has incubated 959 projects and startups within its ecosystem. Samsung Electronics operates a dedicated C-Lab exhibition area at CES to enable these startups to present their technologies. This setup occurs in Eureka Park, the startup zone of CES at the Venetian Expo. Byoung Chul Lee, Vice President and Head of the Creativity & Innovation Center at Samsung Electronics, stated, “Samsung supports C-Lab startups through CES as a platform to validate innovative technologies and build momentum for global growth.” He added that expanded participation from regional startups highlights the continued evolution of the C-Lab ecosystem.
Samsung began showcasing projects from its internal venture program, C-Lab Inside, at CES in 2016. The company uses this event to gauge global market response and validate business potential for these projects. The 15 startups at CES 2026 consist of eight directly incubated by Samsung Electronics through the C-Lab Outside program, four from the Samsung Financial Networks-operated Samsung Financial C-Lab Outside, two from C-Lab Inside, and one jointly incubated by Samsung Electronics and the Daegu Creative Economy Innovation Center.
In 2023, Samsung expanded C-Lab Outside to the Korean cities of Daegu and Gwangju, as well as Gyeongbuk province. This expansion identifies and supports promising startups to strengthen regional startup ecosystems. The program supplies workspace, stage-based consulting, and opportunities to collaborate with Samsung and its affiliates. These resources allow startups to develop without relocating to Seoul and create a sustainable local innovation cycle. To date, 40 regional startups have undergone incubation through this initiative. At CES 2026, seven startups from Daegu, Gwangju, and Gyeongbuk participate, representing the largest presence of regional C-Lab startups at the event.
Repla, a plastic-recycling startup from C-Lab Outside in Gyeongbuk, earned a CES 2026 Innovation Award for its Puri-Checker device. This device analyzes plastic composition ratios. Dong-eun Seo, CEO of Repla, said, “For a regional startup, collaborating with a global company like Samsung has been a valuable opportunity.” Seo continued, “Plastic recycling is a global challenge and CES provides an important platform to explore international market opportunities.”
The seven regional C-Lab startups participating at CES 2026 cover diverse technologies:
- Stress Solution (Gyeongbuk): An AI-based personalized mental-care sound-creation solution.
- Deepscent (Gwangju): An AI-powered digital scent solution tailored to every space.
- Elevenliter (Daegu): AI-powered diagnostics for progressive diseases in pets.
- AunionAI (Gwangju): A web-based AI solution for automated multilingual dubbing and subtitles with expressive voices and sound effects.
- Repla (Gyeongbuk): Enzyme-purified recycled plastic, free of impurities.
- Univa (Daegu): An on-device multimodal large-language-model solution.
- 10kM.ai (Daegu Creative Economy Innovation Center): An enterprise AI video-production solution that can generate, edit, and monetize videos.
C-Lab Inside exhibits two AI-driven projects at CES 2026. These projects received high evaluation for innovation, global scalability, and completeness. ChronoMix provides an AI solution for object-centric video composition. EZ Reco offers a generative AI platform that makes electronics recommendations based on expert knowledge.
Samsung Financial C-Lab Outside introduces four startups to CES 2026 for the first time. This step reflects the expansion of Samsung’s open innovation model across its affiliates. The participation allows startups from various industries to pursue global collaboration opportunities using Samsung’s incubation expertise. Selectstar, linked to Samsung Life Insurance, delivers copyright-cleared datasets and an all-in-one AI evaluation platform. Datumo, associated with Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance, performs cyber risk modeling to quantify and reduce the financial impact of cyberattacks. WINNING.I, from Samsung Card, implements next-generation identity verification through eKYC powered by simultaneous fingerprint and face biometrics. Pillsang, developed with Samsung Securities, deploys a real-time phishing detection solution using on-device AI.
C-Lab startups secured 17 CES 2026 Innovation Awards in total. The Consumer Technology Association announced these honors. Among them, two Best of Innovation Awards went to MangoSlab and StudioLab. Both originated from C-Lab Inside and later spun off as independent startups.
