Bear Robotics Secures $60M Strategic Investment from LG Electronics to Advance Robotics Capabilities

LG Electronics has invested $60 million (approximately KRW 80 billion) in Bear Robotics(베어로보틱스), an AI-powered autonomous service robotics startup. The investment is an equity stake in Bear Robotics, making LG Electronics Bear’s largest shareholder.

This investment is not a financial investment seeking only short-term returns, but rather a strategic investment to expand the business portfolio.

Founded in 2017, Bear Robotics is led by Jung-woo Ha, a former Google software engineer. Bear Robotics provides AI-based autonomous indoor delivery robots in Korea, the US, Japan and other countries.

LG Electronics believes that the paradigm of commercial robots will shift to AI-based software-defined robotics (SDR). This is similar to the shift in mobility trends from hardware to software.

In the future, when the commercial robot market opens up in earnest, it will be essential to ensure the scalability of service robots based on an open software platform to provide services in various fields, and standardisation of AI-based autonomous robot platforms will be important.

LG Electronics has been diligently fostering robotics as one of its future businesses. Starting with the Incheon International Airport robot service in 2017, the company has been introducing optimised solutions for various commercial spaces such as delivery and quarantine. Since last year, LG Electronics has also begun to target overseas markets such as the United States, Japan, and Southeast Asian countries.

The service robot market is expected to grow rapidly as related technologies such as AI and communication develop rapidly and the number of productive people continues to decline due to the declining birthrate and ageing population. The global service robot market is expected to grow from $36.2 billion (KRW 48 trillion) in 2021 to $103.3 billion (KRW 137 trillion) in 2026.