The verified answer
As of Oct 2026, DEPLOY verifies RLWRLD: 1 model, 2 deployments across 2 regions, $40.8M raised. 4 sources back the record.
Overview
RLWRLD is a Seoul-based physical AI company developing robotics foundation models trained directly in real industrial environments. Founded in 2024 by CEO Junghee Ryu (previously founded Olaworks, acquired by Intel in Intel's first Korean startup acquisition), RLWRLD trains its models using multimodal data from live factories, warehouses, and service settings rather than controlled labs. Its flagship product is RLDX-1, a dexterity-first foundation model for robot hands built on the NVIDIA ecosystem, unveiled at NVIDIA GTC Taipei 2026.
Reality check
RLDX-1 (company-claimed, May 2026)
Dexterity-first foundation model for robot hands, shown at GTC Taipei.
Technology (company-claimed)
Multi-Stream Action Transformer on NVIDIA Isaac GR00T; Jetson Thor and Orin edge.
Verified record
- Verified deployments
- 2 deployments on file
- Active incidents
- None on file
Valuation of record
DEPLOY VERIFIEDPriced roundSeed 2 post-money
Key facts
Founded
Leadership
Funding (reported, Feb 2026)
Partners
Investorssee investors →
Data & sources
Press releases
1
News coverage
1
Web sources
2
4 sources backing this record.View all →
Partnerships
Every company RLWRLD has built with, alongside the ones only announced in a press release.
Most-frequent partners
- 1Lotte Group1× joint2 total
- 2Transforma Robotics1× joint2 total
- 3WIRobotics1× joint4 total
Most recent
RLWRLD on the deployment map
View the global map2 verified deployments across 2 regions, newest verified Jun 2024. Explore where RLWRLD's robots are operating, by place and type.
View the full RLWRLD deployment record →
Relationships
Current leadership (2)
- Junghee Ryu Founder & CEOSEC-verified
- Jinwoo Shin Chief Scientist & KAIST Chair ProfessorSEC-verified
Founders (1)
- Junghee Ryuno longer at company
later founded RealWorld
Safety record
No incidents on record for RLWRLD.
Only active incidents are counted. Retracted incidents are excluded from this summary but remain reachable at their canonical URLs.
Full safety record: incidents, sourcing, and exposure data →
Operator customers (1)
- RLWRLD2 deployments
Recent coverage
RLWRLD in third-party press
Peer companies
- Blackswan Space3 models
- CarbonSix2 models
- Embark Trucks2 models
- Gatik2 models
- General Intuition2 models
- Genesis AI2 models
Mentioned on (5)
Registry pages whose text names RLWRLD.
Financial state
- Total funding
- $40.8M
- Reporting basis
- aggregator_estimate
- Lifecycle stage
- early
- Counterparty risk class
- unknown
Each numeric field carries its own basis marker. Aggregators report a number; this surface preserves the source class so verification depth travels with the value.
Partnerships
3 total · 3 just announced
Every company RLWRLD has built with, alongside the ones only announced in a press release.
Most recent
Most-frequent partners
- 1Lotte Group1× joint2 total
- 2Transforma Robotics1× joint2 total
- 3WIRobotics1× joint4 total
All 3 partnerships
open in the atlas →- technology—just announced
- technology—just announced
- technology—just announced
Funding rounds (2)
RLWRLD’s 2 disclosed rounds, $41M in total, oldest to newest.
- Seed 22026-02-25
$26M(reported) · $104M post
Investors: Smilegate Investment, T Investment, Headline Asia (lead), Z Venture Capital (lead), Hashed Ventures, CJ Logistics, Kakao Investment, Lotte Ventures, Hanwha Asset Management, Mirae Asset-Emart Investment Fund, Hyosung Ventures
- Seed2025-04-14
$15M(reported) · $59M post
Investors: Hashed Ventures (lead), LG Electronics, SK Telecom, KDDI Corporation, ANA Holdings, Mitsui Chemicals, Shimadzu Corporation, Mirae Asset, Global Brain, FuturePlay
Timeline
Every recorded move in RLWRLD’s history, most recent first: funding rounds, partnerships, acquisitions, supply-chain starts, key hires, and press.
Funding roundSeed 2 funding round
2026-02-25Seed 2 raising $26000000
Funding roundSeed funding round
2025-04-14Seed raising $14800000
Recent activity
Every change to this record is dated, sourced, and independently verified where marked.
- Record createdJul 16, 2026
Added to the verified registry
- Deployment verifiedVerifiedJun 1, 2024
RLDX-1 at South Korea, Asia
- Deployment verifiedVerifiedJun 1, 2024
RLDX-1 at United States (multiple hotel chains)
Sources (4)
- RLWRLD Raises $26M Seed 2, Bringing Total Funding to $41M · https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/02/26/3245146/0/en/rlwrld-raises-26m-seed-2-bringing-total-funding-to-41m-to-scale-industrial-robotics-ai.html
- https://www.therobotreport.com/physical-ai-startup-rlwrld-raises-26m/
- RLWRLD Official Website · https://www.rlwrld.ai/en
- RLWRLD Raises $15M to Build 'GPT for Robots' · https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rlwrld-raises-15m-to-build-gpt-for-robots-backed-by-asias-industrial-giants-302427574.html
Common questions
What is RLWRLD?
What does RLWRLD make?
Is RLWRLD publicly traded?
Who competes with RLWRLD?
Who is the CEO of RLWRLD?
How can I invest in RLWRLD?
Where is RLWRLD headquartered?
How much funding has RLWRLD raised?
Who owns RLWRLD?
Where does RLWRLD operate robots?
How many robots has RLWRLD deployed?
Is RLWRLD a top robotics company?
When was RLWRLD founded?
Is RLWRLD safe?
Methodology: Verified · 4 sources (1 primary) · last reviewed 2026-10-12
Verification posture
Verified
High confidence
Review state
Stable
Last reviewed 2026-10-12
Sources by quality tier
- 2
- unclassified
- Unclassified source
- 1
- secondary-trade-publication
- Trade publication
- 1
- primary-company-ir
- Company IR disclosure
The framework is documented at /methodology. Corrections at /corrections. Reviewer: DEPLOY editorial team.
Methodology surface for RLWRLD.Peer companies
- Blackswan Space3 models
- CarbonSix2 models
- Embark Trucks2 models
- Gatik2 models
- General Intuition2 models
- Genesis AI2 models
In the press
Recent coverage mentioning RLWRLD from third-party publications. Automatically surfaced; not part of the verified registry record.
RLWRLD Debuts Robotics Foundation Model 'RLDX-1' at NVIDIA GTC Taipei 2026
RLWRLD showcases RLDX-1 at NVIDIA GTC Taipei 2026, scoring 70.6 on RoboCasa Kitchen with ~20% of the training compute used by NVIDIA GR00T N1.5, built on the NVIDIA Isaac…
RLWRLD and the Race to Solve Dexterous AI🖖
Motion awareness, memory, touch, and real-world manipulation are becoming the next frontier for robotics foundation models.
RLWRLD releases RLDX-1, a dexterity-first foundation model for robot hands
RLWRLD unveils RLDX-1, a dexterity-first foundation model built on a Multi-Stream Action Transformer architecture for high-DoF robotic hands, achieving SOTA results across eight…
Physical AI startup RLWRLD raises $26M
RLWRLD raises $26M in Seed 2 funding, training its robotics foundation models directly in live industrial environments with CJ Logistics and Lotte as deployment partners.
RLWRLD Raises $26M Seed 2, Bringing Total Funding to $41M to Scale Industrial Robotics AI
RLWRLD closes $26M Seed 2 round led by Headline Asia and Z Venture Capital, with strategic investors CJ Logistics, Kakao Investment, and Lotte Ventures, bringing total seed…
RLWRLD Raises $15M to Build 'GPT for Robots,' Backed by Asia's Industrial Giants
RLWRLD announces $15M seed round backed by LG Electronics, SK Telecom, KDDI, ANA Holdings, Mitsui Chemicals, and Shimadzu, with AI-focused VCs Hashed, Mirae Asset, and Global…
Physical AI startup RLWRLD brings in $15M
RLWRLD raises $15M seed funding backed by Korean and Japanese industrial leaders including LG, SK, KDDI, and ANA, with founder Junghee Ryu whose previous company Olaworks was…
Machine-readable surfaces
- Markdown mirror: /companies/rlwrld.md
- RSS feed: /companies/rlwrld/feed.xml
- JSON-LD: embedded in this page’s head
- REST API: /v1/companies/78cd2914-f14c-40f7-a046-d8537c7ad5ba
- Revision history: /companies/rlwrld/history
- Data documentation: /data
- Query this programmatically: Deploy MCP
Peer companies
- Blackswan Space3 models
- CarbonSix2 models
- Embark Trucks2 models
- Gatik2 models
- General Intuition2 models
- Genesis AI2 models
Video
Our brand film is a declaration of what RLWRLD stands for. It captures the essence of our journey—building robots that merge extraordinary dexterity with true i
We will be presenting various demos that showcase hand dexterity
If you ask what defines the future of humanoids, the answer is ultimately dexterity. That's where the real edge in Physical AI is determined. And that's what w
Two Robots pack and sort together coordinating in real time, no human in the loop. Powered by RLDX-1, RLWRLD's dexterity-first foundation model for robot hands
75% of factories are already automated. The last 25%, the part that still needs a human hand, is where every robot gets stuck. At RLWRLD's Dexterity Night in S
Join the RLDX-1 Launch List 👉 https://rlwrld.github.io/launch-list/ The human hand is the most sophisticated tool ever created. What if AI could finally unde
Where Physical AI meets real world deployment. RLWRLD won First Prize at the Nebius Robotics & Physical AI Awards in the Foundation Model category, selected f
A practical, page-by-page walkthrough of the RLDX-1 model suite — which model to start from, how much data and compute you actually need, and how to customize a
On May 13, 2026, RLWRLD hosted Dexterity Night at the Exploratorium in San Francisco featuring the first public unveiling of RLDX-1, our robotics foundation mod
Silicon Valley keeps getting younger. The founders getting all the attention are barely out of their twenties. Junghee Ryu, a 52-year-old serial entrepreneur,
RLWRLD raises $14 8M to build a foundational model for robotics #shorts #techtech #rlwrld
Heat Index
Category contender81/100
A composite of competitive footprint, funding, press velocity, active partnerships, and supply-chain edges. Different from the Intelligence score below (which is per-form-factor productization). Non-robotics companies cap at 25.
Reality vs attention
RLWRLD draws attention at the 36th percentile but verifies reality at the 30th percentile among brain robots. Hype Gap +5.7, 12th widest among brain robots.
6-month trend
Analysis
Clean safety record across 2 verified deployments. Funded with institutional backing on record. Deployment footprint remains limited relative to category peers.
Signal flags
Dimension breakdown
Verified signal
Attention (reach, not merit)
DEPLOY Intelligence scores are computed from verified registry data: confirmed deployments, disclosed funding rounds, regulatory filings, active job listings, video viewership, and press coverage. Confidence ratings reflect data availability. Scores update nightly.
DEPLOY Indices — verified vs claimed
Last computed: Oct 17, 2026