Watt lands ₩3B government R&D grant to build dual-armed logistics humanoids
What's the deal? WattDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a South Korean startup building in-building autonomous delivery robots, has been selected for the government's 2026 Scale-up TIPS R&D (Specialized) program. The award grants up to 3,000,000,000 KRW (≈$1.9 million) in state-funded research and development over three years, backed by the Ministry of SMEs and StartupsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and the Korea Technology and Information Promotion Agency for SMEs.
What's the endgame? Watt will use the funding to move beyond delivery into a heavy-duty, dual-armed humanoid robot with full-body control technology. The goal is a single machine that can ride elevators, load and move goods, and handle broader in-building logistics tasks.
Why now? The company recently drew a strategic investment from Yamato HoldingsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Japan's largest logistics firm, after AI delivery robot pilots with affiliate Yamato Transport in Tokyo-area residential complexes. In Korea, it deployed its "Porter Robot" service at the Busan Eco Delta smart city pilot.
Chief executive officer Choi Jae-won said the plan is to "create a new standard for in-building logistics automation" with heavy-duty humanoid robots designed to work alongside people.
What could go wrong? The grant is government R&D support, not a private financing round, so it carries no valuation or fresh equity. The step from wheeled delivery robots to dual-armed humanoids is a significant technical leap, and Watt still plans a US proof-of-concept in the second half of the year.
The signal: This year's Scale-up TIPS was overhauled to lift specialized R&D support from ₩1.2 billion to as much as ₩2–3 billion over three years, raising both the money and the difficulty. Against that backdrop, Watt's award ranks in the top percentile among 135 comparable support-program rounds in its region and sector — a sign of Korea's push to back growth-stage robotics firms scaling from logistics into general-purpose platforms.
Read more: VentureSquare
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
