Sooyoung Park

Chief Executive Officer Socra AI (formerly Riiid)

Last Reviewed: September 18, 2026

Executive Summary

Sooyoung Park is Chief Executive Officer of Socra AI, the Korean artificial-intelligence education company that operated as Riiid until September 2025 and is best known for the SANTA adaptive test-preparation product and for a roughly 200 billion won investment from the SoftBank Vision Fund in 2021. Park did not come up through Riiid. He is a three-time founder who left a KAIST graduate programme after one semester, lost his first company, and then spent eleven years building Qualson, a mobile English-learning business, before Riiid acquired it in December 2023 and installed him as chief executive of the combined group. His defining act in the role has been a repositioning: in September 2025 he renamed the company Socra AI, after Socrates, on the argument that educational AI should teach learners to reach answers through questioning rather than hand them answers directly. The company employs roughly 180 people across Seoul and Tokyo.

Career Highlights

• Founded Qualson in June 2012 after taking first place in a Samsung SDS startup competition reported to have had a 3,017-to-1 entry ratio.
• Secured 100 million won from POSCO in 2013 and 1.6 billion won in 2014 from investors including SoftBank Ventures for Qualson.
• Grew Qualson into a mobile English-education provider used by more than 120 companies, supported by a network of over 500 English instructors.
• Co-founded TimeBomb in 2011, an earlier venture matching bakeries with nearby consumers for discounted unsold stock.
• Led Qualson through its December 2023 acquisition by Riiid and became chief executive of the merged company.
• Renamed the company Socra AI on 30 September 2025, signalling a strategic shift from instant-answer AI tutoring to Socratic dialogue.
• Directs an organisation of about 180 staff from offices in Daechi-dong, Seoul and Ginza, Tokyo, with a focus on international markets.

Professional Journey

Park read electronic engineering at Yonsei University and went on to graduate study at KAIST, but left after one semester. His stated reason was a wish to build something the world actually needed rather than continue in research, and in 2011 he co-founded TimeBomb, a mobile service that told consumers near a bakery when unsold bread was being discounted after closing. The idea attracted investment and a capable team but ran into resistance from bakery owners and into the rise of Coupang and TicketMonster, and the company failed within about two years.

Qualson followed in June 2012, founded after Park won first place in a Samsung SDS startup competition. The business focused on mobile English learning for Korean users, delivering short assignments at intervals through the day with feedback from native-speaking instructors, and selling to companies as well as consumers. POSCO invested 100 million won in 2013 and a 1.6 billion won round followed in 2014 with participation from SoftBank Ventures. At its height the service was used by more than 120 corporate clients and supported by over 500 instructors, many working from call centres in the Philippines.

Riiid, founded in 2014, had taken a different route to the same market, building AI models that predict a learner’s knowledge state and launching SANTA, which reshaped the Korean TOEIC and TOEFL preparation market and drew roughly 200 billion won from the SoftBank Vision Fund in 2021. In December 2023 Riiid acquired Qualson, and Park was appointed chief executive of the combined company, bringing a consumer and corporate distribution business together with Riiid’s modelling capability. The Qualson corporate entity was subsequently wound up in January 2025 as operations were consolidated.

On 30 September 2025 Park renamed the company Socra AI. The name is taken from Socrates and encodes the strategic argument behind it: that AI which supplies answers on demand trains dependence, whereas AI that asks questions and holds a conversation helps a learner arrive at the answer and retain it. The company now operates as Socra AI with roughly 180 employees split between Daechi-dong in Seoul and Ginza in Tokyo, and is pursuing growth outside Korea.

Education

Yonsei University

Bachelor’s degree, Electronic Engineering

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)

Graduate study, not completed. He left after one semester to start his first company.