Robot Hand Maker Wonik Robotics Secures USD 2.65 Billion Led by Korea Growth Fund

Wonik Robotics, a specialist in robotic hands, announced on August 28 that it has attracted a total of 350 billion won (USD 265 million) in investment—including 150 billion won (USD 114 million) in direct investment from the Korea Growth Fund—to build mass-production facilities for humanoid robots.

The Financial Services Commission and the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced on August 27 that the Korea Growth Fund Fund Management Deliberation Committee had approved funding for investment projects totaling 1.61 trillion won (USD 1.22 billion) across seven companies, including Wonik Robotics. The Korea Growth Fund will make a direct investment of 150 billion won in the form of convertible preferred shares (CPS) to finance Wonik Robotics’s new robot hand production plant and artificial intelligence transformation (AX) center in Wanju, North Jeolla Province, with private investors covering the remaining 200 billion won (USD 152 million) to bring the total capital raise to 350 billion won.

Wonik Robotics plans to allocate the proceeds to building production facilities for industrial humanoid robots and robotic hands, localizing core components, and research and development. The company has supplied its in-house-developed Allegro Hand to global firms and research institutions including NVIDIA and Meta, and has been developing a dedicated AI robotic hand with Meta since 2024.

The government expects this investment to help resolve a critical bottleneck in physical AI, given that actuators and robotic hands account for approximately 70 percent of humanoid hardware costs. Although Korea has the world’s highest robot density, its share of global humanoid production remains at around 1 percent.

Wonik Robotics is the second confirmed investment under the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy’s M.AX Frontier Project. In July, the government announced it would actively deploy Korea Growth Fund capital in physical AI sectors such as robotics, future mobility, and AI factories. In April, a consortium of more than 40 industry, academic, and research institutions—including Wonik Robotics—launched the K-Humanoid Alliance under the ministry’s leadership and announced a plan to invest over 1 trillion won (USD 760 million) by 2030.

Funding was also approved for the other six companies on the same day. The Korea Growth Fund has approved or created a cumulative 17.9 trillion won (USD 13.6 billion) in 31 deals from January through August this year. Non-capital-region projects account for 42.5 percent of total support, and the government projects that including blind funds to be finalized in the second half, total commitments will exceed this year’s target of 30 trillion won (USD 22.8 billion).