[Edaily Marketin Reporter Soyoung Park ] This week (July 13–16), startups across various sectors—including beauty brands, chat platforms, and AI-based decision-making and data infrastructure—secured investments from venture capital (VC) firms and accelerators (ACs).

In particular, humanoid robot startup Holiday Robotics drew attention by successfully raising a total of 155 billion won in its Series A round. According to the company, this marks the largest Series A investment ever for a domestic startup. It also set a record for the largest single-round investment among domestic companies specializing in humanoid robots. This is interpreted as investors highly valuing both the growth potential of the humanoid robot market and the company’s technological capabilities.

‘Holiday Robotics’ Develops Robots to Optimize Manufacturing Sites

Physical AI company Holiday Robotics has secured 155 billion won in Series A funding. Existing investors—StoneBridge Ventures, Atinum Investment, Intervest, and Spring Camp—participated in this round. New investors joining the round include IMM Investment, SL Investment, KB Investment, Bon Angels Venture Partners, Premier Partners, Almus Investment, SJ Investment Partners, Dasung Ventures, Atinum Capital Partners, and Goodwater Capital. Financial institution investors, such as the Industrial Bank of Korea and the Korea Development Bank, also participated.

Holiday Robotics was founded by CEO Song Ki-young, who previously established Suar Lab, an industrial AI vision company, in 2013. Drawing on his experience in the manufacturing AI sector, the company aims to automate manufacturing sites using humanoid robots. The company is currently developing “FRIDAY,” a humanoid robot optimized for manufacturing environments. FRIDAY is designed to work alongside humans in manufacturing settings that involve a high volume of repetitive tasks.

Holiday Robotics plans to use this investment to enhance its mass production system. It also plans to expand its R&D workforce to over 100 employees. The company will build manufacturing infrastructure capable of producing more than 10,000 units annually. It will also expand its business scope, starting with the commercialization of humanoid robots for the manufacturing sector and eventually moving into the service robot and home robot markets. In the short term, the company has set a goal of reducing the product price to around 100 million won through mass production.

‘NovaTech,’ a Robot Control Company for Various Manufacturers

NovaTech, a company specializing in industrial robot orchestration platforms, has secured 7 billion won in new investment. Participants in this round included Hyundai Motor Group’s Zero One, Hyundai Motor Securities’ Mobility Fund, and Quantum Ventures Korea. This investment comes as a result of NovaTech demonstrating its technical capabilities and execution skills by successfully completing a series of large-scale integrated robot control projects at Hyundai Motor Group’s key global production hubs.

NovaTech is currently building and operating a system at the Georgia Meta Plant (HMGMA), Hyundai Motor Group’s U.S. electric vehicle production base. This system integrates and controls approximately 300 units—including autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), automated guided vehicles (AGVs), and unmanned forklifts from different manufacturers—on a single platform. The company explained that cases where AMRs and AGVs from various manufacturers are controlled simultaneously 24 hours a day without interruption are rare even in the global market.

NovaTech’s core technology is “PiPER,” a proprietary robot orchestration platform. It allows users to control robots from different manufacturers through a single interface. This reduces the problem of “vendor lock-in,” where users become dependent on a specific manufacturer. Additionally, by utilizing digital twin-based simulation technology, the company verifies robot paths and operating methods in a virtual environment before actually constructing the factory. It has applied “Sim-to-Real” technology to implement these findings in real-world settings. This has also reduced the time required to deploy robots by up to 80% compared to previous methods.

NovaTech plans to use this investment to aggressively expand into the North American market. The company will expand its robotic automation business, focusing on major logistics hubs in the U.S., including Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, and Atlanta. Its strategy is to target local logistics centers and the 3PL market by promoting a monthly subscription-based “Robot-as-a-Service” (RaaS) model. The company is currently conducting pilot projects and implementation discussions with about 10 U.S. companies.

Beauty Brand Operator ‘Fraun’

Prawn, a startup operating the easy-classic beauty brand “MOCRES,” has secured pre-Series A funding from Mark & Company and Solid One Partners. The investment amount was not disclosed.

Prawn is a K-Beauty startup founded on expertise in branding and marketing. Founder and CEO Yang Chae-won previously held roles in brand strategy, product planning, marketing, and communications at beauty and lifestyle brands such as Bray, FastFive, and Freshcode. Prawn’s first brand, MOCRES, is focused on classic beauty.

With this investment, Fraun plans to accelerate product development, strengthen brand content, expand distribution channels, and prepare for global trademark registration and entry into overseas markets. Currently, Fraun has filed trademark applications in major countries including the United States, Japan, and the European Union (EU). The company also plans to proceed in stages with its entry into global markets, starting with Japan.

“Bunker Kids,” Operator of an AI Character Chat Platform

Bunker Kids, operator of the AI character chat platform “WHIF,” has secured a new investment of 2 billion won from Krit Ventures. Krit Ventures believes that Bunker Kids’ capabilities in developing and commercializing AI services will give it a strong competitive edge in the global content market. This is because the proliferation of generative AI is rapidly transforming the way content is consumed—shifting from simply watching and reading to active, hands-on participation.

Founded in 2020, Bunker Kids has successively sold its AI education service “Data Diving” and its AI-based meal plan recommendation and delivery service “MyShipdan.” In July of last year, it launched the AI character chat platform WHIF globally in markets including South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. Currently, 28% of its total revenue comes from overseas. Wip is an AI-based interactive content platform. It is structured so that users build narratives and create events by conversing with officially licensed intellectual property (IP)—such as webtoons and web novels—as well as AI characters developed in-house.

Building on this investment, Bunker Kids plans to accelerate its expansion into global markets, with a focus on Japan and the United States. While continuing to expand its portfolio of officially licensed IP, the company also plans to introduce AI-interactive content across a variety of genres, moving beyond content targeted at female audiences. Through these efforts, the company aims to establish itself as a global AI content platform.

AI Decision-Making Infrastructure Company ‘Connector’

AI decision-making infrastructure company Connectory has secured a pre-seed investment from Bluepoint Partners. The investment amount remains undisclosed. Bluepoint highly valued the company’s technical approach, which directly addresses the trade-off between information processing costs and accuracy. Additionally, the firm decided to invest based on its high regard for the team’s top-tier capabilities and the market potential to expand from the financial sector to all industries.

Connectorary develops “Decision Infrastructure,” which structures information into a decision-ready format before AI performs inference. The founding team is composed of professionals with expertise in their respective fields. Lee Ji-won, CEO of Connectorary and former Deputy CEO of S2W, is in charge of business strategy and product design. Additionally, Jeong Jin-woo, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and former head of AI R&D at S2W, is responsible for developing the AI engine. Kim Seon-hee, former Third Deputy Director of the National Intelligence Service, serves as General Manager and is tasked with establishing a global policy and regulatory intelligence framework.

Connectorary has targeted the financial industry as its first market. The company has completed a proof of concept (PoC) with a major domestic financial institution. It was also selected for Shinhan Futures Lab, the startup incubation program of Shinhan Financial Group. The company plans to expand the application of its technology to the fields of decision-making intelligence and global policy and regulatory analysis required in sectors such as finance, semiconductors, aerospace, and security.

AI Data Infrastructure Startup ‘Algorix’

AI data infrastructure startup Algoryx Corporation has secured pre-seed investment from Kakao Ventures. Kakao Ventures believes the company will lead the way in creating a core data infrastructure for corporate AI transformation and establishing an AI-native work environment. This assessment is based on the view that the company is a team solving problems that are essential to actual business operations. The company transforms unstructured knowledge scattered throughout an organization into a structured knowledge system that AI can trust and utilize.

Algorix is developing a data engine that integrates and manages structured and unstructured multimodal data—scattered across various systems within an enterprise—within a single logical layer. It has automated the process of manually organizing and linking data of different formats—such as text, tables, images, and relational information. This enables AI to query, process, and analyze data in a consistent manner without having to switch between separate systems for different data types. Rather than leaving scattered data as mere search targets, the company has transformed it into a data layer that AI can read, write, and process within actual workflows.

Algorix plans to accelerate its technological advancement and market expansion following this investment. The company is currently conducting proof-of-concept (PoC) projects with multiple enterprise clients. These efforts are based on its capability to design scalable data platforms in cloud environments. Moving forward, the company plans to support customers in directly deploying the platform within their own cloud environments through a software partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS). It also intends to prioritize vertical markets with high data sensitivity. In the long term, the company plans to expand into the Asia-Pacific (APAC) and North American markets.