It’s aiming to add employees and find more real estate north of Austin
By Justin Sayers – Senior Staff Writer, Austin Business Journal
Apr 1, 2025
Cupix Inc., a Korean company that builds 3D mapping software used in the construction and facilities management industries, has moved its U.S. headquarters to Williamson County from Silicon Valley, the latest evidence of the Austin metro’s status as a hotbed for Korean companies.
Cupix executives occupied a small 400-square-foot office at 3016 Polar Lane in Cedar Park earlier this year. The company has more than 125 employees worldwide, including 30 in the United States and roughly half a dozen in Texas. It’s aiming to add employees and find more real estate north of Austin.
CEO Simon Bae declined to provide the company’s precise revenue numbers but said it has maintained annual double-digit growth since its founding in 2015. Cupix has raised $50 million from investors, and its software has been used at 1,300 job sites globally, including 400 in Texas. Local sites include Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and the Dell Seton Medical Center downtown.
What Cupix essentially does is allow customers to take 360-degree videos of construction sites or buildings. The software stitches them into 3D digital twin images, enabling users to add layers of planned blueprints underneath for comparison and to share daily updated maps among stakeholders.
“Instead of taking tens of thousands of photos and then mapping manually, you can just take a video — that’s it,” Bae said.
He said the company’s product is different from those of competitors in that it’s cheaper and more accessible. All that’s needed is a consumer-grade camera available for about $400 to generate 3D rather than flat images at a lower software price point. The company typically works with general contractors but also serves architects, property managers, governmental entities doing facilities management, defense companies and others.
Cupix is working on a new software set to be released this year that relies more heavily on artificial intelligence, and “more proactively can tell the user something is wrong,” Bae said, such as by identifying construction mishaps, damage or even code violations.
Bae founded the company in Korea and set up in San Jose in 2017. He previously started two other companies, INUS Technology and VisPower, both of which were acquired by 3D Systems Corp. Bae also serves as chair of the Korea PropTech Forum.
He moved to Williamson County last year, saying he considers the region “business friendly” and also views its talent pool as better.
“Economic reasons and just resource quality reasons, it made sense to move,” Bae said.
Mark Wilson, Cupix’s Houston-based director of business development, said the company is hoping Williamson County becomes the “forefront of what they are trying to serve.” To sell its products, the company has been meeting with municipalities, construction companies, oil and gas companies, energy companies, defense companies, utilities and even data centers.
The connection to Williamson County was made through the Greater Austin Asian Chamber of Commerce and Cupix’s vice president of artificial intelligence, Francis Pahng. The latter has lived in Austin for the bulk of the last decade and joined a business and technology committee formed by the chamber as part of its efforts to engage Asian businesses.
Chamber CEO Mark Duval said Pahng was able to convince Cupix to come to Williamson County instead of other locales based on efforts the chamber has made to support business leaders moving to it.
For instance, while groups like Opportunity Austin and the Williamson County Economic Development Partnership engage in high-level economic development efforts, Duval said the chamber has positioned itself to help with things like settling into living in Austin, providing connections to things like schools, churches, grocery stores and more.
“It’s really bringing that soft landing support as they consider Austin,” Duval said.
He said a swell of Asian companies are looking at that Austin area, many of which are doing so because of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on countries like China. He said such companies enrich Austin’s economy.
“It just builds out the ecosystem where we’re not always eyeing the big dogs,” Duval said. “Having a range of small-sized and medium-sized (companies) just fills out the ecosystem, makes it more healthy and makes it more nimble.”
Bae said the biggest challenge of being a multinational company is working through different business cultures and regulations. While Cupix has a big presence in Korea, which is mainly focused on software development, about two-thirds of the projects using its products are in the United States.
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