The Invention Lab, a Korea-based early-stage investment firm and venture studio, has completed a seed investment in RIDM PTE. LTD., a Singapore-based AI computing startup tackling one of the field’s most persistent hardware challenges. The round was co-invested with Qube Research & Technologies (QRT), a London-based quantitative investment manager overseeing approximately $38 billion in assets.

At the heart of RIDM’s technology is DODA (Dynamically Orchestrated Dataflow Architecture), a proprietary computing architecture designed to solve the “memory wall” — one of the most stubborn bottlenecks in AI and High-Performance Computing (HPC). For decades, the so-called “spatial compilation” problem has resisted commercialization across the industry. RIDM claims to have cracked it by reducing the problem to linear time, a breakthrough that significantly accelerates development cycles for specialized hardware. The architecture also supports standard C++ programming, giving developers a familiar and competitive alternative to NVIDIA’s dominant CUDA ecosystem.

Beyond writing a check, The Invention Lab will provide ongoing strategic mentoring as RIDM pushes its DODA architecture toward commercial deployment. The startup is already running a Proof of Concept (PoC) with QRT, centered on FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) acceleration — a use case where the architecture’s low latency and peak efficiency are especially valuable.

What drew The Invention Lab to RIDM, however, goes beyond the technology. The company was founded by researchers who didn’t just publish — they built a business around their work. CEO Jinho Lee earned his PhD from the National University of Singapore (NUS) specializing in general-purpose dataflow architecture, with his doctoral research now protected under an NUS-held patent that RIDM holds an exclusive license to commercialize. Technical Advisor Trevor E. Carlson, an Associate Professor at NUS School of Computing and the creator of the widely-cited multi-core simulator SniperSim, co-designed RIDM’s core architecture and served as Lee’s doctoral supervisor. Carlson is broadly recognized as a leading voice in low-power architecture and CPU simulation research.

In the eyes of its backers, what distinguishes the RIDM team is a rare ability to translate deep academic expertise into executable business strategy — a quality that has already resonated with follow-on investors and potential industrial partners.

“RIDM is a next-generation technical team that is directly overcoming the limitations of traditional computing structures,” said Jin-young Kim, CEO of The Invention Lab. “This investment is a bet on the technology itself, but also an expression of trust in the team’s execution and balanced business judgment.”

RIDM operates with a deliberately lean structure, underpinned by three international patents. With PoC results expected to follow, the company plans to pursue strategic partnerships with global enterprises, while focusing near-term efforts on hardening its core technology and building the commercial track record needed to support future funding rounds and full-scale productization.