Config aims to be the 'TSMC of robotics': Korea's manufacturing ecosystem is its edge

In its 'AI Leaders' series, ZDNet Korea profiles Config as the aspiring 'TSMC of robotics,' built on its data factories, which generate more than 1TB of video per day, and trains the dual-arm foundation model CFG-1 on AWS.

Co-founder, CTO Hyungmok Son says the company's real edge is diversity, not sheer volume: "People focus on quantity when they talk about the data bottleneck, but what really matters is how densely you've captured diverse task types, objects, environment, and action patterns."

Rather than building robots itself, Config focuses on the data layer — converting human dual-arm demonstrations into robot-learnable actions. Son points to location as the differentiator: "Korea's manufacturing ecosystem is our weapon — real industrial problems are close at hand, and we can quickly turn them into data and model improvements."