Hyundai Motor Group’s creative platform ZER01NE hosted ZER01NE DAY 2025 from September 17 to 21 at Hyundai Seongsu in Seoul under the theme ZER01NE 0RB1T, which spotlighted how creators, startups, and in-house innovators moved along distinct orbits while interacting across AI, robotics, and mobility.
Launched in 2018, the festival convened artists, developers, and startups to unveil projects and business models, and the 2025 edition presented 20 initiatives that included five creator projects, four collaborations between creators and Hyundai and Kia employees, and eleven ZER01NE-incubated startup projects.
Alongside the public exhibition, the program featured closed-door events such as ZER01NE Venture Demo Day and Robot OI Day, and the latter included a Hyundai CRADLE insights session on September 19 that reflected the Group’s global open-innovation footprint spanning the United States, Germany, Israel, China, and Singapore.
CRADLE-affiliated participants on site included Applied Intuition, which develops software simulation tools to accelerate and de-risk the commercialization of autonomous vehicles, and Upstream Security, which offers a cloud-based data platform for automotive cybersecurity. The lineup also featured GENOMINES, which uses gene‑enhanced plants to extract nickel from soil in support of sustainable EV battery materials, Ampersand, which provides a bidirectional AC/DC solid‑state transformer solution, and Agibot, which builds humanoid robots powered by large datasets and generative AI.
ZER01NE’s Korean startup cohort was also on display and included Mobinn, which develops autonomous delivery robots, ROAI, which provides AI-driven robotic process automation for manufacturing, and Narnia Labs, which offers an AI autonomous design platform. The cohort further included Three i Solution, which delivers neutron-based compositional analysis, Omelet, which provides an AI decision-making platform, and Softberry, which supplies EV charging, payments, and fleet management solutions.
A highlight of in-house innovation was “Ignite,” a generative AI–powered and driver‑personalized in‑vehicle infotainment experience developed by Hyundai and Kia employees that visitors could try during the event. Organizers described ZER01NE DAY as a festival of free experimentation and bold challenges and they invited the public to experience the innovative outcomes created by the program’s network of creators and collaborators.
