KAIST

< From left: Top Excellence Award winner Robolight (Pre-startup Founder Han-seol Choi), Top Excellence Award winner Coils (CEO Seong-ryeol Heo), Professor Jung Kim of KAIST, Grand Prize winner Noman (CEO Jung-wook Moon), Professor Kyoungchul Kong of KAIST, CEO Dae-hee Park of Daejeon Creative Economy Innovation Center, Excellence Award winner Gigaflops (CEO Min-tae Kim), Excellence Award winner BLUE APEX (Pre-startup Founder Na-hyeon Kwon) >

KAIST announced on December 10th that KAIST Holdings (CEO Hyeonmin Bae), a specialized technology commercialization investment institution, successfully held the '2025 KAIST Hu-Robotics Startup Cup' on the 9th at the main building of Daejeon Startup Park. This was held as part of the Robot Valley Project, aiming to discover and foster promising startup teams in the robotics field and establish a robot scale-up ecosystem based on a technology platform.

This competition was conducted as a core program of the Robot Valley Project (Deep-Tech Scale-up Valley Fostering Project), which is promoted by the Ministry of Science and ICT and supported by Daejeon Metropolitan City. The competition proceeded through a meet-up day with KAIST Mechanical Engineering researchers, robotics companies like Angel Robotics and Twinny, and startup experts such as Bluepoint, leading to the final round. Throughout this process, a support system for the scale-up of robot startups was established, linking technology verification, strengthening entrepreneurial capabilities, and investment linkage.

KAIST Holdings and the Deep-Tech Valley Project Group (hereinafter referred to as the Project Group) stated that this competition marks the beginning of 'establishing a Korean-style Robot and AI startup ecosystem.' Their goal through the Robot Valley Project is to create a Korean-style robot scale-up ecosystem centered around Daejeon and KAIST, and furthermore, to build a technology circulation structure utilizing verified technology platforms.

KAIST has produced successful scale-up cases in the robotics field, such as Rainbow Robotics and Angel Robotics. However, the recent robotics industry has seen a rapid increase in technological difficulty due to the convergence of mechanical engineering, AI, and control software, creating structural limitations for early-stage founders to challenge alone.

To solve this, the Project Group proposed the 'Scale-up Valley Construction Strategy,' which opens up the verified technologies of established senior companies to junior founders. This strategy focuses on supporting startups to concentrate on developing market-ready robot services and applications on top of verified technology platforms, rather than consuming excessive time on developing basic hardware like motors and controllers.

The Angel Robotics technology platform, presented as the core underlying technology of this strategy, consists of actuators, control modules, and core software. KAIST plans to gradually open up these foundational technologies for use by early-stage startup teams.

The Project Group emphasized that enabling startup teams to utilize such technology platforms from the initial stage is the core infrastructure for accelerating the Korean-style robot startup ecosystem.

A total of 21 teams participated in this competition, including pre-startup founders (Track A) and early-stage startups established within 3 years (Track B), all possessing human-centered robotics technology and convergence business models.

After fierce preliminaries, 8 teams advanced to the final round, and a total of 5 teams were finally selected: one Grand Prize winner, two Choi Woo-sung (Top Excellence Award) winners, and two Excellence Award winners.

• The Grand Prize was awarded to 'Noman' for proposing an integrated system for a strawberry farm work robot and a rotating vertical cultivation module.

• The Woo-sung Choi (Top Excellence Award) went to 'Robolight' and 'Coils.'

• The Excellence Award was awarded to BLUE APEX and Gigaflops.

Professor Jung Kim, Head of the KAIST Mechanical Engineering Department and General Manager of the Robot Valley Project, said, "This competition has become the starting point for discovering future robot unicorns. For the next three years, we will continue to provide practical support for the growth of robot startups, and KAIST will play a leading role in building and expanding the deep-tech robot ecosystem centered in Daejeon."

< Group Photo of Award Winners >

Meanwhile, this competition was jointly hosted and organized by the Ministry of Science and ICT, Daejeon Metropolitan City, and the Research and Business Development Special Zone Foundation, as well as startup support organizations including KAIST, KAIST Holdings, Daejeon Technopark, and Daejeon Creative Economy Innovation Center.