LG Electronics Makes 80 Billion KRW Strategic Investment in US Bear Robotics

AI-Based Autonomous Driving Service Robot Startup
Strengths in Robot SW Platformization and Swarm Control
Accelerating Commercial Robot Business Development

LG Electronics is making a strategic investment of approximately 80 billion KRW in Bear Robotics, an AI-based autonomous driving service robot startup.

LG CLOi CarryBot. Photo by LG Electronics

On the 12th, LG Electronics announced that it has signed a new share subscription agreement to acquire shares in Bear Robotics, headquartered in Redwood City, Silicon Valley, USA, by investing 60 million USD (about 78.7 billion KRW).

This equity investment is not a financial investment seeking short-term profits but a strategic investment carried out from the perspective of advancing the business portfolio. Through this investment, LG Electronics aims to accelerate the enhancement of capabilities in the commercial robot business, including delivery and logistics, which is being nurtured as one of its future new businesses.

Once the stock trading is completed, LG Electronics will become the largest single shareholder of Bear Robotics. Bear Robotics, led by CEO Ha Jung-woo, a former Google software engineer, was founded in 2017. It has many engineers from big tech companies such as Google, including co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO). The company provides AI-based autonomous indoor delivery robot services not only in Korea but also in the United States, Japan, and other countries.

The company's robot development capabilities based on an open platform are evaluated as top-tier globally. In particular, it has outstanding capabilities in commercial robot software platformization, swarm control technology that controls multiple robots, and cloud-based control solutions, attracting industry attention.

Earlier, Jo Joo-wan, CEO of LG Electronics, stated at the 'CES 2024' press conference held earlier this year, "LG Electronics' commercial robot business mainly focuses on service areas such as delivery and logistics, and we are carefully observing the development direction while keeping open the possibility of equity investments or mergers and acquisitions (M&A)."

LG Electronics has boldly restructured its limited businesses such as mobile phones and solar energy over the years and has concentrated resources on future high-growth areas. This equity investment is also intended to accelerate the early strengthening and nurturing of the commercial robot business. It emphasized that the future paradigm of commercial robots will shift to AI-based software-defined robots (SDR), and securing scalability of service robots based on an open-structured software platform is essential.

For this reason, since the standardization of AI-based autonomous driving robot platforms is important, this investment is expected to be an opportunity to rapidly enhance the capabilities of the robot business, which is being nurtured as a future new business.

LG Electronics has its own commercial robot production facility at LG Future Park in Gumi, Gyeongbuk, and has introduced optimized solutions for various commercial spaces such as delivery and disinfection, starting with the Incheon International Airport guide robot service in 2017. LG Electronics explained that combining this with Bear Robotics' global research and development (R&D) infrastructure and software platform capabilities can lead to leading robot platform standardization and dramatically reduce market entry costs, resulting in maximized business efficiency and synergy.

CEO Ha Jung-woo also emphasized, "Just as Android opened the smartphone era, a standardized open platform is necessary to activate the robot market." Lee Sam-su, Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) of LG Electronics, said, "This equity investment will greatly contribute to securing the 'winning competitiveness' of the service robot business, which is entering a full growth phase," and added, "From a mid- to long-term perspective, we will explore various opportunities by combining differentiated technology areas such as 'Embodied AI' (AI with a body based on vision, language, and behavior models) and advanced robot manipulation, and make the robot business a future growth engine."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.