Bear Robotics announced that it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Kinisi Robotics. Upon closing, Kinisi will become part of Bear Robotics, and the transaction is expected to close in the coming days.
Kinisi’s KR1 humanoid robot, Bristol-based engineering team, and Physical AI capabilities will be integrated into Bear Robotics. Bear said the acquisition will complete its end-to-end Physical AI robotics platform by adding the manipulation AI layer needed for robots to handle physical work.
Bear has shipped more than 16,000 service robots into commercial use globally. The company said its robots already operate as coordinated teams through agentic multi-robot orchestration, moving through busy, changing environments rather than following fixed tracks or routes.
Kinisi adds capabilities that enable Bear’s fleet to move beyond delivery and cleaning into picking, sorting, and handling physical work. Kinisi has been building on Bear’s production navigation stack since its founding, which has given Bear insight into the quality of Kinisi’s engineering, the maturity of the KR1 manipulation platform, and the depth of its Physical AI research.
Kinisi’s KR1 is a wheeled humanoid platform designed for picking, placing, sorting, and moving objects across industrial, logistics, and hospitality environments. Kinisi also brings proprietary manipulation models, including a vision-language-action model and a robot foundation model, as well as AI infrastructure spanning imitation learning, reinforcement learning, agentic task control, and computer vision.
The acquisition will also bring Bear in-house gripper and end-effector design capabilities, as well as a low-cost, robot-agnostic glove that captures hand-based manipulation demonstrations. Bear said this approach decouples training data collection from robot time and helps scale the demonstrations that its models learn from.
Kinisi’s Bristol office will continue as a strategic engineering hub for Bear. Upon closing, Kinisi founder and CEO Brennand Pierce, a previous co-founder of Bear Robotics, will join Bear’s leadership team as Chief Robotics Officer and continue leading the Kinisi engineering organization and KR1 platform.
Until closing, Bear Robotics and Kinisi Robotics will continue operating as separate, independent companies. Existing customer relationships, pilots, evaluations, and points of contact will continue unchanged during the interim period.
KEY QUOTES:
“Signing this agreement is the right next step for Kinisi and for the KR1. We built Kinisi on Bear’s navigation stack from day one because we believed it was the strongest foundation in the industry. What Bear has that no one else does is a real Physical AI platform already operating at commercial scale – deployed robots, enterprise customers, manufacturing, and cloud orchestration. Manipulation is the missing layer, and that’s what Kinisi brings. Together we’re not building one humanoid in isolation; we’re completing an integrated, multi-robot automation platform. I’m excited about what we’re going to build.”
Brennand Pierce, Founder and CEO of Kinisi Robotics and Incoming Chief Robotics Officer of Bear Robotics
“Bear was built to put robots to work in the real world, and we’ve spent years building the platform to do it: thousands of robots deployed, one cloud orchestration stack, real enterprise customers, and a manufacturing supply chain behind them. Kinisi completes that platform. Its manipulation AI is the layer that lets our robots move from navigating and delivering to actually handling the work in front of them. Most companies are trying to get from a pilot to a product; we’re expanding from a deployed commercial fleet into full Physical AI automation. I want to thank the Kinisi team for what they’ve built in the KR1, our customers and partners for their continued trust, and our employees and investors for backing this next chapter. This is the start of a much bigger chapter for Bear.”
John Ha, Founder and CEO of Bear Robotics
