SK Square Invests in Japanese Physical AI Unicorn 'Mujin' to Secure New Growth Engine

Overseas investment subsidiary TGC Square joins Series D round
SK Square expects to boost corporate value following d-Matrix's gains

SK Square is accelerating its expansion into AI and semiconductors by investing in Japanese physical AI company Mujin.

According to industry sources on October 12, SK Square recently participated as a key investor in Mujin's Series D funding round, which totaled more than KRW 300 billion, through its overseas investment subsidiary TGC Square. Series D refers to a late-stage funding round typically raised by startups or growth companies as they expand their businesses ahead of an initial public offering (IPO).

Founded in 2011, Mujin is a physical AI company that uses its general-purpose robot control platform, MujinOS, to make robots in factories and logistics warehouses more intelligent and to centrally control entire facilities. To date, it has raised more than KRW 600 billion from major global institutions and companies, including Japan's NTT Group, the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), and Salesforce Ventures, and has been valued at more than $1 billion (approximately KRW 1.3 trillion).

SK Square expects Mujin's physical AI and robot control technologies to create strong synergies if applied to semiconductor packaging, logistics processes, and fab construction sites across the SK Group. In particular, the company sees an opportunity to accelerate the development of state-of-the-art "autonomous fabs" by centrally controlling the various autonomous mobile robots inside semiconductor manufacturing plants with MujinOS.

With this investment, the number of AI and semiconductor deep-tech companies in the United States and Japan that SK Square has invested in through TGC Square has risen to eight. SK Square previously invested in U.S. companies d-Matrix, Tetramem, Hammerspace, and Numata Technologies, as well as Japanese companies Qlux, IOCORE, and Linkers. Among them, U.S. AI semiconductor startup d-Matrix, which received investment in 2023, has recently been valued at more than $2 billion, marking a more than sevenfold increase from its valuation at the time of investment.

An SK Square official said, "We will continue to identify promising investment opportunities across the AI and semiconductor value chains and reorganize our portfolio to further enhance our corporate value as a holding company specializing in semiconductor investments."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.