Late final week, LG Electronics introduced it had acquired a majority stake in Bear Robotics, rising its possession of the San Francisco-based startup from 21% to 51%. In accordance with South Korean newspaper The Dong-A Ilbo, LG initially acquired its 21% stake in early 2024 for $60 million. The corporate values its newest stake at $180 million, giving Bear Robotics an general valuation of $600 million.
Whereas a 60%-of-a-billion-dollar valuation won’t evaluate to the staggering figures usually related to AI startups—although current occasions, equivalent to China’s DeepThink’s troubles, might immediate reevaluations—it’s a actually good valuation for a meals tech firm, particularly within the difficult meals robotics sector.
The place Are All The Unicorns?
Anybody who’s been following The Spoon (we had been the primary publication to jot down about Bear Robotics in early 2018) is aware of meals robotics startups have had a tricky go of it the previous few years. Excessive-profile flameouts like Zume have dominated headlines, whereas quieter exits, equivalent to Mezli and Vebu, have underscored how difficult that is.
Vebu, previously Wavemaker Labs, performed a pivotal function in launching Miso Robotics, creator of the Flippy burger bot, together with different meals robotics ideas like Piestro and Bobacino. Nonetheless, by the point Serve Robotics acquired Vebu Labs final fall, its solely notable product within the portfolio was the Autocado, an avocado-coring robotic adopted by Chipotle.
Bear Robotics, nonetheless, has achieved regular traction within the restaurant and meals service business. This success, mixed with LG’s strategic plans to develop a service robotic platform for business and residential purposes, has pushed its increased valuation. As The Dong-A Ilbo reported, LG plans to create an built-in resolution platform that “encompasses business, industrial, and residential robots” utilizing Bear Robotics’ software program to handle numerous robotic merchandise by way of a unified system.
Service Robots Over Meals-Making Robots
What Bear doesn’t present LG with is an precise food-making robotic; as an alternative, it gives a reasonably open platform for service robotics in eating places and different hospitality areas. At this level, it’s nonetheless unclear whether or not there would be the identical degree of curiosity in food-making robots. Some gamers, like Picnic and Miso, proceed to make progress, however they face important competitors for what’s undoubtedly a restricted variety of huge quick-service and fast-casual chains which have but to amass their very own options.
May Serve and Starship be subsequent?
As main tech firms and client manufacturers more and more view robotics as important to their future methods—in what Nvidia’s CEO has referred to as “bodily AI”—it’s possible that we’ll see extra acquisitions within the service and supply robotics area. Corporations with restricted proprietary IP (and my sense is LG didn’t have a lot right here) could also be notably determined to snap up corporations much like Bear which have been round sufficient to create a basis of discernable IP and a various set of merchandise and construct a buyer base.
Potential acquisition candidates embrace Serve Robotics, identified for its sidewalk supply robots, and Starship Applied sciences, a pacesetter in autonomous supply methods. Each firms have gained traction however function in an setting the place consolidation is changing into inevitable.
