The New York digital comics platform is combining its 300,000-title library with INKR’s AI localization engine and bringing in new management to drive the expansion.
The problem of getting manga into the hands of readers outside of Japan is not a requirement. Manga is the fastest growing category in American book publishing; Global interest has been growing for years, fueled by streaming adaptations of franchises like Demon Slayer, Attack on Titan, and Jujutsu Kaisen.
The problem is infrastructure. Translating, reformatting, and distributing a comic series across languages and screen sizes is still a largely manual process, and the industry’s publishing toolset has never been built to handle it at speed or scale.
GlobalComixA New York-based digital comics platform is betting it can fix that. On Wednesday, the company announced three moves at once: a $13 million funding rounddesignation Henrik Rydberg as chief executive, and the acquisition of INKR, a Singapore-based AI localization platform for comics.
Together, the announcements describe a company that wants to be not just a place to read, but an infrastructure layer beneath the global comics publishing industry.
The $13 million round was co-led by SBI US Gateway Fund, the US arm of SBI, one of Japan’s most active venture capital firms with more than 1,200 portfolio companies, and Point72 Ventures, the venture arm of Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management.
Point72 Ventures previously led GlobalComix’s $6.5 million Series A in July 2023 and returned as co-lead. Additional participants include Scrum Ventures, Wise Ventures, Wicklow Capital and Upside VC.
The Japanese-US investor pair is intentional. The SBI network covers the Japanese media and publishing, manga producing market, while Point72 brings continuity and a US market perspective.
Shohei Yamada, Managing Partner of SBI US Gateway Fund, described GlobalComix “building an infrastructure that connects creators, publishers and readers around the world,” adding that he believes it has the potential to make manga and comics “accessible to everyone, everywhere”.
Ishan Sinha, who now leads the 2023 Series A at Point72 Ventures, said INKR’s AI team and localization technology have been added. “meaningfully expands what the platform can support for creators and publishers.”
The acquisition of INKR brings the most technically significant element of the announcement.
INKR was founded in 2019 by Ken Luong, Khoa Nguyen and Hieu Tran, a team based in Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City, and launched its app in October 2020.
The platform’s core product is an AI-powered localization engine that automates the most labor-intensive steps in developing a comic for a new language market: text and object detection, image cleaning, translation and transcription.
The company says the technology cuts localization time from days to hours and has been used to localize more than 15,000 comics, though that number comes from GlobalComix’s press materials and has not been independently verified.
GlobalComix’s platform currently hosts more than 300,000 titles from publishers including Marvel, DC, Kodansha, Image Comics and Tokyopop, along with more than 25,000 independent creators.
The company’s ambition is to combine INKR’s localization pipeline with its existing distribution and monetization infrastructure, effectively creating a vertically integrated system: a publisher brings a Japanese title, an AI engine prepares it for English, French or Brazilian Portuguese markets, and GlobalComix handles distribution and revenue.
The global manga market is estimated to exceed $20 billion annually, with demand for translated content growing in the West.
Whether GlobalComix can capture a meaningful share of this workflow against established players, including digital platforms such as Viz Media, Yen Press and WEBTOON, depends on whether the AI localization quality is good enough for professional publishing standards and whether publishers trust startups with their most valuable IPs.
The acquisition of INKR, whose technology has been described as already trusted by publishers in Japan and Korea, is the most obvious attempt to answer this second question before it is asked.
