POSCO DX said on the 23rd that it will invest $2 million in U.S. industrial Humanoid Robot corporations "Persona AI" and actively cooperate on joint robot development and on-site applications.
The investment was made through the "POSCO DX corporations venture capital (CVC) new technology investment association," which POSCO DX and POSCO Technology Investment funded in the second half of this year. Through the "POSCO CVC Scale-up Fund No. 1" funded by POSCO Technology Investment, an additional $1 million was invested, bringing the total to $3 million at the POSCO Group level.
Persona AI is an industrial Humanoid Robot corporations founded in Jun. 2024 and is developing robots specialized for heavy industry sites with high labor intensity. Nicholas Radford, a former NASA roboticist, serves as CEO, and Jerry Pratt, who served as CTO at U.S. Humanoid Robot firm Figure AI, serves as CTO; they co-founded the company. Persona AI is implementing precise control functions capable of everything from micro-component assembly to heavy-load handling, based on NASA's robotic hand technology.
POSCO DX said it plans to flesh out cooperation measures related to developing Humanoid Robots that can replace high-risk manual processes at group companies' industrial sites through this investment. The company noted it will accelerate the spread of physical AI by combining its industrial AI technology with Persona AI's robot technology. Earlier, POSCO DX, together with POSCO, has been implementing physical AI that efficiently controls ultra-large equipment such as cranes, conveyor belts, and unloaders at steel mills with AI technology and without worker intervention.
U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley, in a report, projected that the global humanoid market will grow an average of 63% annually to reach about $38 billion (about 54 trillion won) by 2035. It forecast that manufacturing and logistics will account for 60% of the total.