South Korean RLWRLD Secures $14.8 Mn to Advance Robotics AI Model

South Korean startup RLWRLD has raised 21 billion KRW ($14.8 million) in seed funding to develop a foundational AI model for robotics, according to a report by TechCrunch. 

The funding round, led by venture capital firm Hashed, also included investments from Mirae Asset Venture Investment and Global Brain. The startup’s strategic partners include LG Electronics, SK Telecom, Mitsui Chemical, Shimadzu and KDDI from Japan and Amber Manufacturing from India.  

RLWRLD aims to address limitations in industrial robotics by combining large language models with traditional robotics software. Founder and CEO Jung-Hee Ryu explained, “Using RLWRLD’s foundation model, processes that require a lot of manual work can be completely automated by learning and copying human expertise, making work environments more efficient.” 

The funds will support proof-of-concept projects with strategic investors, infrastructure acquisition like GPUs and robots, and the development of advanced five-fingered hand movements.

The company also plans to demonstrate humanoid-based autonomous actions later this year while working on a platform to support various types of robots, including industrial and collaborative models. RLWRLD was founded in 2024 by Ryu, who previously launched Olaworks (acquired by Intel) and FuturePlay, a deep tech accelerator. 

RLWRLD also aims to generate revenue this year through collaboration demonstrations and projects targeting industrial sectors with high demand for automation.

Looking at building AI for robotics, other companies in the US have also achieved developments. This began in February this year, when Figure AI announced Helix, a vision-language-action model that allowed humanoid robots to perform complex tasks using natural language. 

Watch the robot pick up virtually any object by natural prompting, like ‘Pick up the desert item’ here. 

Following this, in March, Google DeepMind built the next generation of humanoid robots with its new AI model, Gemini Robotics, which enables Apptronik’s Apollo to understand natural language and perform real-world tasks in environments it has not seen before.

In the same month, NVIDIA unveiled Isaac GR00T N1, its first generalist foundation model for humanoid robots, and made it open-sourced. GR00T N1 enables robots to reason, plan, and act in complex environments, combining ‘slow thinking’ with reasoning and perception and ‘fast thinking’ with precise and real-time actions. 

The giant also introduced Newton, an open-source physics engine for robotics simulation developed in collaboration with Google DeepMind and Disney Research.