RLWRLD raises $14.8M to build a foundational model for robotics

As robotics is advanced, the industry has steadily adopted more robots to automate many types of grunt work. More than 540,000 new industrial robots were installed worldwide in 2023, so that the number of total industrial robots was active up to more than 4 million, per IFR.

Industrial robots usually excel in repetitive tasks, but they find it a challenge to perform precise tasks, to handle delicate materials and adapt to changing conditions – for example, a robot in the kitchen of a restaurant would be more than useful. That is why many industrial processes are still manual.

South Korean startup Rlwrld The aim is to solve this problem with a fundamental AI model that it has specifically built for robotics by combining large language models with traditional robotics software. The company says that this model will enable robots to make fast and agile movements and also to perform a number of “logical reasoning”.

“With the help of the foundation model of RLWRLD, processes that require a lot of manual work can be fully automated by learning and copying human expertise, making work environments more efficient,” said Jung-hee Ryu, founder and CEO of RLWRLD, in an exclusive interview with WAN.

The startup now comes from Stealth with 21 billion WFT (about $ 14.8 million) in seed financing. De Ronde was led by risk capital company Hashed, and Mirae Asset Venture Investment and Global Brain have also invested.

In particular, RLWRLD has put on a long list of large strategic investors – Ana Group, Pkssha, Mitsui Chemical, Shimadzu and KDDI from Japan; LG Electronics and SK Telecom from Korea; And amber production from India.

RLWRLD said that the seed financing will be used to finance proof-of-concept projects with its strategic investors; Secure computer infrastructure such as GPUs, buy robots and devices to collect extensive data; And hire top research talent. The startup will also use the new money to develop advanced hand movements with five fingers-one possibilities that has not yet been demonstrated by its competitors such as Tesla, Figure AI and 1x, Ryu said.

Ryu said that RLWRLD also works together with his strategic investors to explore ways to automate different people -oriented workflows With the help of his AI model. Together they prepare a humanoid -based autonomous action demonstration, planned for later this year, Ryu said. Moreover, the company is working on developing a platform that can support different types of robots, including industrial, collaborative, autonomous mobile robots and humanoids.

Founded in 2024, RLWRLD is the third startup of Ryu. His second startup, OlaWorks, was taken over by Intel in 2012And eventually became the Korea R&D center of Intel within the Computer Vision division. And in 2015 he founded A startup accelerator, future gameThat focuses on deep technology companies.

When asked what inspired him to start a new company again, Ryu said he noticed how fast AI startups in the number of the US, Europe and China, while comparable AI startups in Korea and Japan were relatively absent.

He spoke with more than 30 AI professors from Korea and Japan about their challenges – all of the lack of infrastructure such as data and GPUs, and the obstacles that discouraged them from launching a business – and the available opportunities.

“I have established that it would be strategically advantageous to give priority to Robotics Foundation Models (RFM) above the technologically saturated field of LLMS, in Korea and the remarkable worldwide strong points of Japan in production,” he said.

Shortly thereafter he released six professors of top institutions in South Korea, including Kaist, SNU and Postech, together with their research teams, to launch RLWRLD.

RLWRLD is not only in tackling this problem. Startups such as Skild AI and Physical intelligence build comparable fundamental models for robotics, just like larger companies such as Tesla, Google DeepMindand Nvidia.

But Ryu believes that his startup has a good start, because it already has AI and robotics experts who needs to develop fundamental models for robotics, as well as humanoid robots with a high degree of freedom (dull).

“In addition, [such companies] Usually trusted on low-dof robots such as grabbing with two fingers. RLWRLD has already secured a high-dof reference robot and therefore expects superior performance results, “he said.

Ryu also said that thanks to his strategic investors, RLWRLD can quickly collect valuable data from the near production locations. In 2024, a report indicated that Japan and South Korea jointly accounted for 9.2% of global production production.

RLWRLD wants to generate income this year through proof-of-concept (POC) projects and cooperation demonstrations with strategic partners.

The long -term objective of the startup is to meet factories, logistics centers and shops, and even robots that can be used in domestic environments to help with household tasks. In the meantime, it is the priority to focus on industrial, because they are willing to pay the most and have a strong demand for automation.

The startup has 13 employees.