NAVER D2SF Invests in TraceWeave as On-Device AI Startup Raises KRW 3 Billion Seed

NAVER D2SF has invested in TraceWeave, an on-device AI startup, in a seed round led by Mirae Asset Capital. TraceWeave raised approximately KRW 3 billion at a pre-money valuation of approximately KRW 30 billion, PR Newswire reported on October 20, 2026.

TraceWeave's Phase-TITAN Architecture and Pilot

TraceWeave is led by co-founder and CEO Jaeyoung Park and develops Phase-TITAN, a post-Transformer architecture that understands long contexts and carries out multi-step tasks while keeping memory usage constant. The company said that at a 1M-token context without quantization, a comparable Transformer's KV-Cache holds tens of gigabytes or more, while its 1B Phase-TITAN model holds 0.04 GB. TraceWeave's internal benchmarks on RULER and BFCL indicate that Phase-TITAN maintains performance on par with Transformer models of the same size and larger, according to the company.

TraceWeave has demonstrated a multi-step agent running on a smartphone using only its CPU, without cloud calls. In mobility, it completed a paid pilot with the autonomous driving affiliate of a global automotive group, identifying driving-data frames that improve the partner's autonomous driving model without human annotation. The company is also validating in-vehicle agent performance with a global automotive electronics software company and exploring opportunities in robots, drones, smart glasses, and wearables. TraceWeave was a Top 20 finalist in NVIDIA's 2026 Inception Grand Challenge and was co-founded in October 2025 by researchers with backgrounds at ETH Zurich, Google, and KAIST.

"Taking the KV cache out was never the hard part. Staying capable without it was," said Jaeyoung Park, co-founder and CEO of TraceWeave. "The best part is no part. Phase-TITAN already delivers Transformer-class capability without the Transformer's memory tax, and the next one goes well beyond its class, with the memory still fixed."

Sanghwan Yang, Head of NAVER D2SF, said, "On-device AI is a core technology for implementing complex, advanced AI across diverse device environments beyond PCs, and it also offers advantages in reducing cloud call costs and protecting privacy."

NAVER D2SF's Recent Investment Activity

NAVER D2SF, the corporate venture capital arm of NAVER Corp., invests in early-stage startups, according to akta.pro company records. The same records show NAVER D2SF led an investment in 23i, a virtual entertainment startup specializing in virtual artists using proprietary real-time motion capture and toon shader technologies, in July 2026. NAVER D2SF also committed to explore potential collaboration opportunities between portfolio companies and NAVER's Motion Stage virtual production platform.

Earlier NAVER D2SF Funding Deals

NAVER D2SF invested in ImpriMed, a precision medicine company, joining its $10 million Series A2 bridge round, PR Newswire reported in September 2026. ImpriMed combines ex vivo functional testing with AI to support personalized cancer treatment decisions. In August 2026, NAVER D2SF invested in F4GE, a South Korean startup building a programmable manufacturing network connecting domestic factories with global defense and advanced industries, Pulse 2.0 reported. The first institutional round includes KNET Investment Partners, Sazze Partners, DCAMP, and 500 Global.

TraceWeave's Plans After the Seed Round

Based at NAVER D2SF @Gangnam, TraceWeave plans to use the funding to expand its research and engineering team for next-generation architecture development and grow its business.