[Korean Startup Weekly News #140] Wearable Robotics Powers Korea’s Deep Tech Rally

[Korean Startup Weekly News #140] Wearable Robotics Powers Korea’s Deep Tech Rally

Wearable Robotics Powers Korea’s Deep Tech Rally as Ramp Hits $60B Valuation Korea’s deep tech funding rally kept rolling this week — wearable robotics company Hurotics raised a Series A of roughly $19M backed by Naver, Lotte, Daewoong, and Mirae Asset, while AI chip maker DeepX, quantum computing startup OQT, small modular reactor developer RX, and EV energy platform PIT IN all closed rounds of their own. Local governments and accelerators posted investment-matching results in hard numbers, from Gyeonggi’s roughly $35.7M scale-up round to Seoul’s beauty-startup push into the US market. Overseas, AI inference infrastructure company Modal crossed $1B in annual recurring revenue on its way to a $750M raise, corporate spend platform Ramp hit a $60B valuation, and three biotech companies — OMass Therapeutics, Soufflé, and Estuary — each closed rounds above $100M in the same week. Subscribe on LinkedIn → | Daily Korean news at Wowtale.net → HEADLINE Wearable Robot Startup Hurotics Raises Series A Led by Atinum Investment Hurotics raised a Series A of roughly $19M (KRW 25B), pushing cumulative funding past $25M, to expand its medical gait-rehabilitation exosuit H-Medi and build out a wearable physical-AI data platform. Strategic investors Naver, Lotte, and Daewoong joined alongside Mirae Asset Venture Investment and existing backers Stonebridge Ventures and IBK. Founder Ki-wook Lee’s wearable-robot research was a Science cover story in 2019 — the bet now is that the same soft-exosuit technology moves from hospital rehab into everyday use. Latest Funding News Notable investments and deals shaping Korea’s startup ecosystem. AI Chip Maker DeepX Raises USD 11M from Samsung Securities and Samsung Venture Investment via a third-party paid-in capital increase, accelerating development of its NPU-based on-device AI chips. Heat-Supply SMR Startup RX Raises USD 7.6M Pre-Series A Bridge, Cumulative Funding Reaches USD 18M from KDB Industrial Bank and other backers, advancing its decarbonized heat-supply reactor, the RX-50. Commercial EV Energy Platform PIT IN Raises Series A of roughly $9M (KRW 12B) to build a distributed energy platform for commercial EVs, with Hyundai Motor Group’s ZER01NE joining as a strategic investor. OQT Raises Roughly $10.6M in Pre-Series A Funding Led by DSC Investment to advance error-tolerant neutral-atom quantum computers, with Kakao Ventures and Bluepoint Partners returning alongside new investors including Schmidt and Z Venture Capital. E2E Self-Driving Software Developer MotifDrive Raises USD 4.9M from MYSC, TONY Investment, K-Run Ventures, and BSK Investment to advance its Vision-Language-Action model toward a real-road demo in January 2027. Logistics Robot Startup PyBrain AI Raises USD 494,000 from KOSDAQ-Listed OA in exchange for a 24% stake, to automate warehouse picking and packing with AI-driven robots. Enterprise AI Startup Enhance Secures USD 1.5M Investment from POSCO DX through POSCO DX and POSCO Investment’s jointly managed CVC fund, to develop AgentOS, an ontology-based operating system for enterprise AI agents. More funding this week Car Care App Sejinsa Secures Bridge Investment from Seoul Techno Holdings, Selected for TIPS Program Proteomics-platform company Vertis AI was selected for the Ministry of SMEs and Startups’ “Scale-up TIPS” specialized track to advance its AI drug-target discovery platform [KO] Climate-tech company Greenda, which produces sustainable aviation fuel feedstock, secured roughly $2.3M (KRW 3B) through the same “Scale-up TIPS” selection [KO] Float Bio Raises USD 140K for Point-of-Care Bladder Cancer Diagnostic Kit AI Music Production Solution MixRoom Raises Seed Funding from MYSC The Ventures Makes Seed Investment in Korean-Style Bakery Café Smoking Tiger The Invention Lab Backs Eight Early-Stage Startups in AI Semiconductors, Digital Healthcare, Content IP, and F&B Korea Ecosystem & Trends The rest of this week’s Korea startup news — not funding — in brief. Local governments and accelerators post investment-matching results in hard numbers. The Gyeonggi Content Agency’s “Level-Up Investment Round” delivered roughly $35.7M (KRW 47.1B) to portfolio companies [KO], and the Seoul Business Agency paired eight beauty startups with a US venture firm [KO] for roughly $1.5M toward US market entry. Busan Bank’s “B-Startup Challenge” put roughly $227,000 behind five winning teams [KO], and the Ministry of SMEs and Startups selected 200 of 500 regional founders [KO] in its “Challenge for All” program, after a separate nationwide round drew 93,000 applicants for 10,000 spots [KO]. Big tech and fintech players expand on their own terms. Kakao unveiled a unified agentic AI interface built into KakaoTalk [KO], and medical AI firm Lunit partnered with US precision-medicine company Discovery [KO]. Fintech NextPayments became the only Korean company selected [KO] for the New York City Economic Development Corporation’s “NYC AI Nexus,” and AI infrastructure startup VesslAI structured a GPU financing deal with Korea Investment & Securities [KO]. Startup support organizations keep busy with awards, demo days, and cross-border programs. Innoforest’s “Innovation Forest Awards” named 30 startups to its third-round shortlist [KO], and D.Camp held a Batch 4 Demo Day [KO] for seven deep-tech founders. BluePoint Partners hosted its 13th Demo Day [KO], themed “Technological Optimism,” and Busan’s innovation center ran a Korea-Japan deep-tech exchange [KO] tied to Japan’s Ramen Tech program. Jeju’s innovation center ran an AI strategy seminar [KO] for goods and service businesses, and separately announced an “Investor Day” for Oct. 22 [KO] to support bio and life-tech fundraising. Biohealth keeps building outside the big rounds. Cell-therapy company Ipsell registered a patent for low-immunogenicity universal iPSCs [KO], strengthening its cell-therapy platform business. Global Briefs Selected headlines from the global startup ecosystem. [AI Infra] Modal crosses $1B ARR, raises $750M Series D [Enterprise] Ramp raises $1.85B at $60B valuation [AI Infra] Voltus raises $225M Series D for grid flexibility [Big Tech] Meta launches agent model Muse Wonder [Big Tech] Meta releases open-weight Muse Spark Open, tuned for Apple Mac Studio [AI] Anthropic’s Q3 revenue hits $16.8B as growth slows, IPO valuation debate begins [Biotech] OMass Therapeutics raises $310M Series C [Biotech] Soufflé raises $135M Series B for cell-specific RNA delivery [Biotech] Estuary launches with $103M for kidney-delivery gene therapy [Robotics] ICON raises $200M Series D for 3D-printed construction [Robotics] microagi raises $55M seed, claims 10x revenue growth [Healthcare AI] Suki raises $90M Series E for clinical AI agents [Quantum] Qilimanjaro raises €19.6M Series A [Semiconductor] Salience Labs raises $125M Series B for photonic switching chips [AI] Elorian launches vision-reasoning model Glimpse at $300M valuation [AI] Albert raises $55M Series B for chemistry-native AI [AI Data] Labelbox raises $100M+ Series E [China] MOSI raises over RMB 1B Pre-A for real-time omnimodal AI [China] Infinigence AI raises RMB 2.3B Series C [Healthcare] Scarlet raises $50M Series B for AI medical device certification [Biotech] Sabi raises $50M seed for non-invasive brain-AI interface What We’re Seeing Hurotics pulled in Naver, Lotte, and Daewoong as strategic investors in the same round — Korean conglomerates look like they’re converging on wearable robotics as a shared platform bet, not one-off corporate venture plays. Modal’s $750M raise landed right as it crossed $1B in ARR, and Ramp’s $1.85B round priced at a $60B valuation — both were backed by actual revenue growth, not valuation momentum alone. Meta shipped a closed frontier agent model and an open-weight model built for Apple hardware in the same week, running both strategies in parallel instead of picking one. Three biotech companies — OMass, Soufflé, and Estuary — each closed rounds above $100M after a quiet stretch for the sector; worth watching whether Q4 keeps up the pace. Subscribe to Korean Startup Weekly News Read more Korean startup stories at