Korea’s largest producers again Config, the TSMC of robotic knowledge | TechCrunch

Asia’s push into bodily AI is being fueled by the identical manufacturing prowess that made the area a world industrial powerhouse. Throughout South Korea, Japan, China and Taiwan, manufacturing stays a central pillar of financial progress. In contrast to economies extra closely weighted towards providers or software program, these nations have lengthy relied on large-scale manufacturing, export-driven industries, and extremely optimized provide chains. That structural basis is now shaping how synthetic intelligence is adopted and the place funding flows.

Which makes it notably important that Config, a Seoul- and San Jose- based mostly startup constructing the information layer for robotic foundation models (RFMs), has secured backing from the enterprise arms’ of South Korea’s largest producers.

Samsung Enterprise Funding led its oversubscribed $27 million seed spherical at a valuation of greater than $200 million, bringing Config’s complete raised to $35 million. Hyundai Motor’s enterprise arm ZER01NE Ventures, LG Tech Ventures, and SKT America, a South Korean telco big’s VC unit, additionally joined as strategic buyers, alongside angel investor Pieter Abbeel (co-founder of Covariant AI and a UC Berkeley professor) and monetary backers together with Mirae Asset Ventures, Korea Improvement Financial institution, GS Futures, Kakao Ventures, and Z Ventures.

Config was based in January 2025 by CEO Minjoon Search engine optimization, a former researcher at Meta and chief scientist at Twelve Labs, together with three co-founders with backgrounds at Waymo, Google and Naver. As an alternative of constructing robots themselves, the staff is concentrated on an easier objective, offering knowledge robots must be taught and function. They imagine that higher knowledge shall be key to creating robots extra helpful.

Coaching giant language fashions is pricey, due to the computing energy required to course of them, however the uncooked materials, huge quantities of textual content from throughout the web, is simple to acquire. Instructing robots to maneuver is a very totally different problem, Search engine optimization mentioned in an unique interview with TechCrunch. Each piece of coaching knowledge needs to be bodily collected, such as you want the robotic, the ability to run it, and other people to function it. That makes robotics AI extra expensive to develop than software-only chatbot, in response to the Search engine optimization. As corporations pursue extra succesful robots, the price of gathering and labeling knowledge can rise rapidly.

Config needs to be the corporate that makes everybody else’s robotic AI attainable. The startup compares its position to TSMC, a Taiwanese chipmaker that manufactures  for Apple, Nvidia, and AMD with out competing with any of them. Config goals to play the same position in robotics by supplying the information. The strategy is gaining traction as giant producers more and more search to construct their very own proprietary robotic AI as an alternative of relying fully on exterior distributors. That’s the market Config is betting on.

Config is already producing income, COO and co-founder of Config Jack Bang mentioned. The startup’s present prospects embrace giant producers, system integrators, and firms within the agriculture and protection sectors, Bang advised TechCrunch. Friends within the area embrace Bodily Intelligence, Generalist AI and Skild AI.

Config data people performing bodily duties in managed studio environments and within the area. The startup operates out of Seoul and Hanoi, the place a workforce of almost 300 handles knowledge manufacturing. Thus far, it has collected over 100,000 hours of human movement knowledge, greater than 30 occasions the scale of AgiBot World, the biggest comparable open-source dataset at roughly 3,000 hours.

Most robotics groups prepare AI fashions on human movement knowledge after which adapt these fashions for a robotic. Config is taking a unique strategy, Search engine optimization mentioned. The corporate focuses on reworking the information earlier than coaching begins so it’s higher suited to the way in which robots transfer and work together with the world. Search engine optimization in contrast the method to language translation. Coaching a mannequin on one kind of knowledge and anticipating it to work seamlessly in one other setting, Search engine optimization mentioned, is attempting to show Korean utilizing solely English-language supplies.

“The info have to be transformed, not the mannequin. This conversion know-how is Config’s core technical differentiator,” Search engine optimization mentioned.

The funding will go towards three priorities: scaling its knowledge operation in Vietnam and Seoul towards a million hours of collected knowledge, rising its enterprise platform enterprise to $10 million in ARR by the top of 2027, and launching a cloud-based Robotic-as-a-Service product that lets corporations run Config’s basis mannequin with out requiring onboard {hardware}.