Bear Robotics, a robotic waiter startup, simply picked up $60M from LG

LG Electronics might not be a family identify in smartphones, but it surely nonetheless sees an enormous future in devices like robots. As we speak, the corporate confirmed a $60 million funding in Bear Robotics, the California startup that makes synthetic intelligence-powered server robots for eating places and different venues — autonomous tray towers on wheels that are supposed to substitute waiters. With the funding, LG Electronics turns into Bear’s largest shareholder. 

Bear’s final fundraise in 2022 valued the corporate at simply over $490 million post-money, per PitchBook knowledge. It’s not clear what the valuation is for this newest funding, however the last year has not been a great one for startups within the house.

However, the present vogue for all issues AI, and the final advances which can be coming with that, are giving robotics gamers a fillip — see yesterday’s Covariant news, for one more instance. Nonetheless, it’s not clear what Bear hopes to deal with subsequent with the essential trays-on-wheels kind issue that it has adopted for its flagship Servi robots.

We’ve contacted Bear and LG for additional remark.

The Bear funding comes almost two months after LG CEO William Cho hinted at LG’s curiosity in fairness investments in robotics specializing in supply and logistics at CES 2024 in January: the corporate is placing cash the place its mouth is.

After LG shut down its struggling mobile business globally in April 2021, the Korean electronics and equipment large shifted its enterprise focus to different progress areas, together with good houses, related units, the Web of Issues (IoT), electrical automobile (EV) parts, and robotics and synthetic intelligence platforms. 

“As the service robot market enters a period of growth, this equity investment will significantly contribute to securing a ‘Winning competitive edge’ for the company,” Lee Sam-soo, chief technique officer at LG Electronics, stated in an announcement. “From a mid-to long-term perspective, we will seek to develop our robot business into a new growth engine, exploring various opportunities through the integration of cutting-edge technologies such as Embodied AI and robotic manipulation.”

This funding isn’t LG’s first robotic enterprise. The Korean electronics firm has been researching and creating software program and {hardware} in robotics for years. In 2017, LG deployed information robots at South Korea’s largest airport, Incheon Worldwide Airport, per its assertion. 

Bear was based in 2017 by John Ha, a former Google software program engineer-turned-restaurateur, who witnessed how difficult issues might get. Ha’s first-hand expertise with the challenges of working a restaurant impressed him to develop serving robots. 

The SoftBank backed startup operates its indoor supply robots within the U.S., South Korea and Japan. These serving robots, designed to assist ship meals to restaurant clients, have been efficiently deployed in varied settings.  

“Just as Android revolutionized the smartphone era, standardized open platforms are essential for the activation of the robot market,”  Ha stated. 

Simply final month, LG’s CEO had a meeting with Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg to debate a possible collaboration for creating prolonged actuality (XR) units. In late November, LG arrange an extended reality (XR) team as a part of an organizational reshuffle to expedite the event of an XR machine, aiming for 2025.