Atlo recently announced that it has attracted seed investment for its 'emotionally empathetic AI robot' solution.
This round was solely participated by American venture capital firm Strong Ventures, and the investment amount was kept undisclosed.
Atlo's core technology is a multimodal AI that analyzes nonverbal elements such as facial expressions, voice tones, and gestures in real time to understand user emotions and provide more natural interactions. Unlike existing conversational AI that only uses text and voice, its point of differentiation is that it detects nonverbal signals and implements more human-like communication.
In addition, Ato develops not only a software-type conversational agent ('Ato') but also robot hardware, supporting a high level of emotional exchange even in offline interactions. For example, it can accumulate and learn user data over the long term, providing more detailed responses over time. Currently, the web-based chatbot 'Ato' has achieved 2,000 monthly active users (MAU) in just two months since its launch, and user satisfaction has also been confirmed to be high as a result of robot pilot operations deployed in some cafes and speech academies.
Inquiries regarding service experience and robot rental can be made on the website . Hyungwoo Park, an appraiser at Strong Ventures who led this investment round, said, “Atlo has already proven to have high user satisfaction even before its official launch, and there is currently no solution on the market that provides as much emotional connection as Atlo, so we expect even more growth in the future.”
With this investment, Atlo plans to officially launch a mobile app in the first half of 2025 and expand offline usage by distributing robots through B2B subscription and rental models. It has already secured 34 pre-orders for robot hardware and plans to sign rental contracts with more than 10 organizations by the second half of 2025 to further strengthen its marketability.
The Atlo founding team stated, “There are many people who need someone to talk to, but we wanted to solve the problem of emotional exchange being difficult due to the isolation and lack of communication in modern society.”
Park Sung-hyun, CEO of Atlo, said, “We decided that in order to realize emotional communication, the physical channel called robots were key along with nonverbal signal analysis,” and added, “The determination to properly implement an emotional immersion experience that no one has attempted before is the starting point of this technology and product.”
Atlo is paying attention to the fact that leading overseas models have successfully implemented emotional communication targeting specific customer groups (elderly people, children, etc.) and is seeking to present differentiated services in domestic and overseas markets based on ‘nonverbal emotional analysis’ and ‘offline robot linkage’ technologies.
In particular, we plan to make a full-fledged entry into major markets such as North America and Japan through the launch of a global app in 2025, while strengthening cooperation with various partner organizations in education, cafes, and psychological counseling. We are already improving our services through pilot operations and customer feedback, and we are also accelerating the hiring of personnel to further support our robotics and AI capabilities, with the goal of providing a more stable and innovative emotional support experience.
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