RLWRLD, a South Korean physical AI startup building robotics foundation models, has announced raising about $15 million in its seed funding round anchored by venture capital firm Hashed.
Mirae Asset Venture Investment, Global Brain and investors from Korea, Japan, and India, including Ana Group, PKSHA, Mitsui Chemical, Shimadzu, KDDI, LG Electronics, SK Telecom, and Amber Manufacturing, backed the round.
RLWRLD, led by CEO Jung Hee Ryu, whose previous startup Olaworks was acquired by Intel in its first-ever acquisition of a Korean firm, has built a purpose-built foundational AI model for robotics, which merges large language models and traditional robotics software.
The company believes the approach will give robots greater agility and some capacity for “logical reasoning.”
Its platform blends three core pillars: an embodied model architecture for real-world intelligence, industrial-scale data pipelines within the region’s manufacturing network, and ready-to-deploy infrastructure compatible with existing robotics systems.
RLWRLD will reportedly use the funding to grow its data systems, improve its robotics AI models, and strengthen ties with robotics and sensor makers in Asia and North America.
It is also working with top universities like KAIST, Seoul National University, and POSTECH, as well as robotics firms such as WIRobotics, Rainbow Robotics, Wonik Robotics, and Robotis.
RLWRLD’s funding comes as robot installations in 2023 reached more than 541,000, data from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) showed. Asia remains the world’s largest industrial robot market even as robot installations in the region dropped 6% year-on-year in 2023 to 404,391 units.
IFR said three of the top five markets for industrial robots are in Asia, with China as the largest market.
In March, Beijing launched a 100 billion yuan ($13.7 billion) fund to invest in artificial intelligence, robotics, and “other industries of the future”, making it the largest mega-sized industry fund set up by a regional government.
With a fund life of 15 years, the mega-sized government industry fund will focus on supporting embodied intelligence innovations, as well as related industrial applications and mass market adoption.
