RLWRLD, a startup from South Korea that builds AI models for robots used in factories, has raised about $26 million in its Seed 2 funding round.
This brings the company’s total seed funding to around $41 million.
The Seed 2 round includes financial investors like Headline Asia, a global venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, and Z Venture Capital Corporation, the investment arm of Z Holdings (the company formed by the merger of Yahoo Japan and LINE).
Strategic investors in this round include CJ Logistics, Kakao Investment, Lotte Ventures, Hanwha Asset Management, Mirae Asset – Emart Investment Fund I, Hyosung Ventures, Smilegate Investment, and T Investment. Hashed Ventures, which led the Seed 1 round, also invested again in Seed 2.
“The next phase of robotics begins with scalable intelligence — robots that learn directly on real production floors like factories and apply that accumulated experience across more sites,” said Akio Tanaka, founding partner of Headline Asia. “In East Asia, where labor shortages are intensifying, RLWRLD’s ability to work closely with major industrial partners and accumulate real-world data is a critical foundation for building long-term competitive advantage.”
“The competitiveness of future logistics lies not in simple facility automation, but in how quickly companies can secure a sophisticated AI brain that understands operations and makes autonomous decisions,” said Jong-hoon Lee, CFO and head of management support at CJ Logistics. “Through our collaboration and strategic investment with RLWRLD, we will jointly advance a robotics foundation model directly applicable to logistics environments and accelerate the transition to AI-based autonomous operations at our distribution centers.”
“Robotics intelligence can’t be built in isolation, it has to be trained where work actually happens,” said Junghee Ryu, founder and CEO of RLWRLD. “Our strategy is to develop and deploy alongside the companies operating factories, logistics networks and service environments every day. The model we’re launching this year is designed to learn directly from those settings and improve as it moves across them.”
RLWRLD is building advanced AI models for robots so they can work more like humans. These models help robots see, sense, and move with better accuracy and control, similar to how human hands work. The company wants to improve manufacturing and logistics by making robots smarter and more flexible.
RLWRLD uses large amounts of different types of data, strong AI technology, and global partnerships to train its systems. Its multi-sensor technology collects detailed data from real factory environments to build reliable and adaptable AI models. Supported by major Korean and Japanese manufacturers and top investors, the company is already testing its technology with industry partners and helping strengthen Asia’s position in industrial AI.
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