00:00here's a number that should get every founder's attention foreign venture capital firms are flying
00:04into seoul next month to meet physical ai startups it's friday october 23rd let's look at what this
00:10means for startups and entrepreneurs in korea venture capital firms from the united states
00:14japan and beyond will attend robo world 2026 in ilsan running november 4th through 6. korea's
00:22physical ai sector is drawing serious global interest meanwhile domestic robotics firms still
00:27face a funding gap compared to their american peers here's what the numbers show holiday
00:31robotics raised 155 billion one in july the largest single funding round for a korean humanoid firm to
00:38date in the united states optronic raised 415 million dollars in its series of last year
00:44then added 520 million dollars in february meanwhile korean physical ai firms need capital for compute
00:51infrastructure robot prototyping field validation and mass production so what does this mean for
00:56founders weighing expansion and outside capital this year here is what to take from it early on
01:01we said that foreign capital is arriving in korea's physical ai sector here's what that actually means
01:06for you the korean advantage is manufacturing depth which global investors want and the gap is scale of
01:12capital and large customer wins founders who can show field data and enterprise pilots will have the
01:18strongest case beyond that japanese trading house affiliates like mitsui global investment and e12
01:23ventures bring access to a global network spanning manufacturing logistics and energy for a korean
01:29robotics team that is a route into global proof of concept work advisory firms like silicon foundry are
01:36also looking at humanoid startups which gives you another route to enterprise partners abroad the gap is
01:41scale not capability the key advantage for korean robotics firms is factory ready hardware and the open
01:48question is whether they can convert that into large customer contracts and overseas funding that's today's ai prism
01:54founders this episode was produced with ai assistance based on seoul economic daily reporting
01:59ai prism is a juan ifra award-winning series we'll be back tomorrow
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