Korean startup Raion Robotics announced that it has secured a total of USD 16.5M(KRW 23 billion) in Series A funding from SBVA, Company K Partners, FuturePlay, KDB Capital, the Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK), and IBK Venture Investment.

With this funding, Raion Robotics plans to establish a mass production system for its flagship product, the quadruped robot ‘Raibo,’ and accelerate its expansion into the global market.

Raion Robotics is a faculty-led startup founded by Dr. Jemin Hwangbo, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at KAIST. The company’s core technology was developed based on over a decade of research and development in robot design and control from the KAIST Robotics and AI Lab (Rai Lab), led by Professor Hwangbo.

Raion Robotics’ flagship model, ‘Raibo,’ is equipped with reinforcement learning-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) that allows it to autonomously identify terrain characteristics and maintain stable locomotion on any unstructured terrain, including sloped mountainsides, stairs, snowfields, and sandy beaches. Notably, by internalizing core components, the company has secured an operating time of 8 hours—more than three times longer than existing commercial robots. This is highly regarded for significantly increasing its applicability in various industrial fields requiring long-duration missions, such as defense, disaster rescue, construction sites, and logistics.

Recently, ‘Raibo’ astonished the world by successfully completing a full 42.195-kilometer marathon alongside a human. This achievement is a monumental feat that proves Raion Robotics’ technology has moved beyond the laboratory level, demonstrating its stability and durability in real-world environments and drawing significant attention from the global robotics industry.

Sangwoo Hong, vice president at SBVA who participated in the investment, stated, “Raion Robotics is a team with world-class quadruped robot technology. The combination of long-accumulated research from KAIST and the strong leadership of CEO Jemin Hwangbo has prepared them to move beyond the lab and become a ‘game-changer’ in actual industrial fields. We are confident they will be a key player in shifting the paradigm of the global robotics industry.”

Kang-soo Lee, CEO of Company K Partners, also commented, “We have highly valued the growth potential of Raion Robotics since our initial seed investment. We expect this Series A funding will serve as a launchpad for their full-scale production and business expansion.” Aram Jeon, a principal at FuturePlay who participated in both the seed and Series A rounds, added, “It is encouraging that they have sharply focused on commercialization from the very beginning and proven their market fit in the global defense sector in a short time. A major strength is that Raion Robotics’ internalized technology portfolio is highly scalable, allowing them to flexibly respond to expanding customer needs in the future.”

Dr. Jemin Hwangbo, CEO of Raion Robotics, shared his vision, “Using this large-scale investment as a stepping stone, we will establish ourselves as a global leader by providing innovative robot solutions that solve problems faced by humanity, such as labor shortages due to population decline and work in hazardous environments.”

Raion Robotics plans to continue leading the future of the domestic and international robotics industry by consistently improving the performance of ‘Raibo’ through ongoing R&D while expanding its lineup of special-purpose robots tailored to the needs of various industrial sites.