Neubility Unveils Semi-Humanoid Robot 'Billy,' Targets Hundreds of Units Within Two Years

* Editor's note: AI PRISM (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an artificial intelligence-based personalized news recommendation and summary service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six news items tailored to each reader type.

1. "Our Goal Is the Fastest Path to Commercialization": Neubility Unveils Humanoid 'Billy'

- Key summary: Neubility unveiled its semi-humanoid robot "Billy" on the 29th at KT&G (033780) Sangsang Planet in Seoul's Seongdong District, saying it aims to claim the title of the fastest commercial humanoid in South Korea. Billy pairs a robotic upper body with a four-wheel drive unit. It has 16 degrees of freedom in total and a maximum height of 1,497 millimeters. It is fitted with five-fingered robotic hands, and its upper body rotates 360 degrees. Rather than replicating every human motion, the company concentrated functions on autonomous movement and simple tasks, and developed a robotics artificial intelligence model that recognizes on-site equipment and object placement to make task decisions. Billy is set to begin proof-of-concept testing at four companies, including CJ CheilJedang (097950), and Neubility said it aims to deploy several hundred units within one to two years.

2. Kakao Pushes Won-Pegged Coin for Everyday Use

- Key summary: Kakao Group said on the 29th that it is moving ahead with a won-pegged stablecoin business that can be used for everyday payments and remittances. At "Next Finance Korea," co-hosted with KB Kookmin Bank, Kakao Group presented the promotion of won-stablecoin circulation and the build-out of digital asset-based payment and settlement infrastructure as its main tasks. Kakao, which has reviewed the business case since last year and secured issuance and circulation technology, is focusing on establishing the coin as an everyday payment and remittance tool by leveraging KakaoPay's user base of 43 million. The group also proposed forming a roundtable, an open cooperative body with broad participation from banks, brokerages, fintech firms, virtual asset operators and e-commerce companies.

3. NAVER to Guide the Way on Meta AI Glasses: Planting a Flag in Korea Before Google's Launch

- Key summary: Meta said on the 29th that it will add real-time pedestrian navigation based on Naver Map to its AI glasses, Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta, this year. Users can receive guidance on direction of travel, entrances, and stairs and escalators through open-ear speakers without taking out their smartphones. They can also call up a Naver Map-based agent by voice to check information on nearby cafes or hospitals. NAVER is the first South Korean company Meta has partnered with in the AI glasses field, a move read as an effort to secure services familiar to domestic users ahead of product launches this year by the Google and Samsung Electronics camps. Meta is rapidly expanding its points of contact in South Korea, including adding the country to the launch markets for its new Meta glasses and unveiling a collection co-designed with Blackpink's Lisa.

4. Games Made With AI Can Now List on ONE Store

- Key summary: App marketplace ONE Store said on the 29th that it is opening "AI Games," an AI game section launched in August, to all developers. The move follows a judgment that while game-making has become easier as cases of completing a game simply by conversing with AI, such as vibe coding, increase, there are too few distribution channels to showcase and monetize them. Any developer who has built a game with AI tools can register a product on ONEconsole, the developer center, and the platform will give priority support to web games that run without installation, allowing developers to earn in-app purchase and in-app advertising revenue through software development kit integration. The AI game menu, which will be revamped early next month, will be placed at the bottom of the ONE Store app, further improving user accessibility.

5. Police Search Cosmo Robotics (439960) Over Suspected Pre-Listing Revenue Inflation

- Key summary: The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's Financial Crime Investigation Unit searched Cosmo Robotics' office in Seoul's Guro District on the 29th on suspicion of violating the Capital Markets Act and other charges. Cosmo Robotics is suspected of falsely booking revenue by making it appear that it had sold some of its wearable rehabilitation robots to a corporation for about 400 million won last March. It is also suspected of inflating overseas revenue by making it appear that its European subsidiary sold robots for about 2 billion won in December of the same year. Police believe such fictitious sales were reflected in the 2025 financial statements, raising annual revenue by about 3.5 billion won above the actual figure, equal to about 40% of last year's consolidated revenue. Cosmo Robotics, which listed on the KOSDAQ in May this year, disclosed consolidated revenue of 8.863 billion won for last year, and its shares traded at 10,610 won in the after-market as of 7:14 p.m. that day, down 6.35% from the previous session.

6. "Flawless Processing of 2mm Glass Substrates: We Will Seize the AI Chip Equipment Market"

- Key summary: Philoptics (161580) is accelerating its push into the semiconductor equipment market with through-glass via (TGV) technology that drills through 2.0-millimeter-thick glass substrates in a single pass. Kang Sang-ki, president of Philoptics, met with Seoul Economic Daily in Songdo, Incheon, on the 29th and stressed, "We expect demand for glass substrates to take off going forward, so we will secure 2mm TGV technology preemptively and seize the market." As chiplet technology that integrates graphics processing units (GPUs) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) into a single package spreads, substrates are growing larger and warping of organic substrates is worsening, increasing the need for glass substrates that are stronger and flatter. Kang said, however, that the biggest hurdle to commercialization is shifting beyond TGV technology to yield across the entire process, including plating, polishing and wiring. The company expects the glass substrate market to enter full commercialization around 2028.