Korea's NanoForge AI raises $10.9M seed to automate materials discovery
What's the deal? NanoForge AIDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a South Korean startup using AI to design new materials, has raised a US$12.2M (roughly $10.9 million) seed round, it said on October 30. Mirae Asset Venture InvestmentDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → led, with existing backers FuturePlay and Mashup VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → joined by new investors DSC InvestmentDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Korea Development BankDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and Ecopro Partners. The round pushes the company's total funding past US$12.6M.
Why it stands out: The raise sits near the top of its class — above the 97th percentile among all-time seed rounds for AI startups in South Korea, based on a sample of 423 deals.
What's the endgame? Founded in 2025, NanoForge AI predicts how materials behave at the atomic and electronic level, aiming to cut development that once took a decade down to about a month. The company will use the funds to advance its electronic-structure prediction technology and build a robotic lab that synthesises and analyses materials autonomously, feeding results back into its AI in a closed loop.
Why now? Semiconductor and battery performance hinges heavily on materials, raising demand for low-cost, high-performance discovery methods. NanoForge AI already works with battery-materials maker Ecopro BMDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and has collaborated with Samsung ElectronicsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →; Ecopro Partners' participation extends that technical tie into a strategic investment.
Who's joining: Alongside the round, the company appointed KAIST mechanical engineering chair professor Yoo Seung-hwa as a technical advisor, a specialist in physics-based multiscale modelling. He joins Park Chan-young, a KAIST professor advising since 2025, giving the startup a two-professor advisory structure spanning materials AI and manufacturing processes.
Mirae Asset's Cho Jin-hwan called NanoForge AI "a team that can completely change how materials are developed," citing its combination of atomic-level AI prediction and robotic labs. Chief executive officer Kim Dong-hyun said the plan is to build "a materials development system where the next discovery gets faster as experimental data accumulates."
What could go wrong? NanoForge AI must prove its AI not only predicts candidates but produces materials that are reproducible in the lab and viable in industry. Its success will depend on how quickly it can validate new materials and lock in industrial partners.
The signal: Venture money is flooding into AI-driven materials discovery. Overseas, UK-based Cusp AI raised $450 million in July at a $2.6 billion valuation, while US startup Periodic Labs secured $300 million at seed. South Korea's government is backing the sector too, earmarking autonomous research centres and AI materials funding. NanoForge AI's raise shows the trend reaching Korean seed stages — where the real test is turning big cheques into validated materials and industrial deals.
Read more: wowtale.net
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
