Holiday Robotics, a Korean startup specializing in general-purpose humanoid robots, announced on the 27th that it has secured 17.5 billion won(13.2 million USD) in seed funding. Investors participating in this round include Stonebridge Ventures, SpringCamp, Atinum Investment, Intervest, and Hyundai Motor Zer01ne.

Founded in April 2024 by Ki-young Song, the founder of SUALAB, Holiday Robotics is a team of AI and robotics experts. SUALAB, a deep learning-based vision inspection company, was acquired by the US-based Cognex for 200 million dollars in 2019, marking the largest M&A of a Korean technology startup.

Stonebridge Ventures, which led this funding round, along with SpringCamp and Intervest, were among the early investors who recognized the potential of SUALAB’s deep learning technology even before deep learning became mainstream. Based on their previous relationship with Ki-young Song and the significant growth potential of the humanoid robot market, they participated in this investment.

Holiday Robotics is developing humanoid robots that can be used in various manufacturing industries for tasks such as parts assembly. The company aims to expand its applications to service industries and households in the future. In particular, the company is focusing on research to minimize the data required for robots to learn new movements through simulation-based reinforcement learning, as well as on manipulation research centered on precise robotic hands that can be used in manufacturing.

With this investment, Holiday Robotics plans to focus on recruiting top-level talent in robotics and AI and on developing humanoid robots. To this end, the company plans to establish a robotics research institute in the United States by the first half of 2025.

Choi Dong-yeol, head of investment at Stonebridge Ventures, who led this investment, said, “Having observed Ki-young Song for over nine years, I was impressed by his unique ability to successfully commercialize AI software and complex hardware combinations based on a new paradigm of machine learning vision inspection, as well as his ability to solve various unimaginable problems in the process. I was convinced that Holiday Robotics, composed of Song and robotics and AI developers, is the best fit for developing humanoid robots, which is a very high hurdle, and I decided to invest without hesitation.”

Ki-young Song, CEO of Holiday Robotics, said, “Just like the intense competition for deep learning performance in ImageNet ten years ago, there is currently fierce competition for humanoid robot performance. However, just as deep learning technologies with high performance but poor usability failed to commercialize, the most important thing for the commercialization of humanoid robots is the usability of how easily and quickly robots can learn new movements. Just as SUALAB pioneered the commercialization of deep learning technology in vision inspection, Holiday Robotics will lead the commercialization of humanoid robots.”