NAVER's startup investment arm D2SF said on the 21st that it has made a new investment in TraceWeave, an on-device artificial intelligence startup.
TraceWeave has developed a proprietary AI model architecture called Phase-TITAN, which keeps memory usage constant while understanding long contexts and carrying out multi-step tasks. NAVER D2SF said it decided to invest after highly rating the company's ability to run AI agents in constrained hardware environments, as the use of AI expands across devices including robots, cars, smart glasses and drones.
Phase-TITAN is a new AI architecture designed to resolve the memory bottleneck that arises when building on-device AI agents. It replaces the conventional transformer structure and serves as a foundational technology that allows developers to build their own AI models without relying on other open-source models.
A key feature is that memory usage stays constant even as the volume of information to be processed grows. This makes it possible to run an AI agent that performs multi-step tasks — calling external tools, interpreting the results and deciding on follow-up actions — on the device itself, without communicating with a cloud server.
Using the technology, TraceWeave has demonstrated an AI agent that carries out multi-step tasks using only a smartphone's central processing unit (CPU). In mobility, it completed a paid proof of concept (PoC) for driving data analysis with the autonomous driving affiliate of a global automaker group, and it is also verifying the performance of an in-vehicle AI agent with a global automotive electronics software company. The company is exploring ways to expand into robots, drones, smart glasses and wearable devices.
TraceWeave was co-founded last October by researchers from ETH Zurich, Google and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). The company is credited with technical development capabilities rooted in computational neuroscience and physics, along with business development expertise.
The seed round was led by Mirae Asset Capital, and TraceWeave raised about 3 billion won ($2.1 million) in total. The round valued the company at about 30 billion won ($21 million). TraceWeave is currently based at D2SF @Gangnam, NAVER D2SF's startup support space, and plans to use the funding to hire talent and expand its business.
Yang Sang-hwan, head of NAVER D2SF, said on-device AI is a core technology for running complex and advanced AI on a range of devices beyond the PC, with added advantages in cutting cloud costs and protecting personal data. He said TraceWeave is overcoming the limits of existing AI models through innovation in AI architecture and is implementing AI in on-device environments.