Kinisi

Kinisi develops wheeled humanoid robots for warehouse and industrial work. Its Kinisi 01 robot is designed to lift, carry and manipulate objects with human-scale reach, combining a mobile base, arm hardware and onboard AI for logistics tasks.

Market context

Represents a deployment-focused approach to automation, prioritizing practical industrial use cases over humanoid form, with a structure aligned to scalable task execution in warehouses and facilities.

Products

Kinisi 01

Facts

Website: https://kinisi.com
HQ: New York, United States
Founded: 2024
Segment: industrial robotics

Adaptive industrial robot company

Kinisi develops multi-purpose robots for logistics, assembly, retail, maintenance and dynamic production environments.

Target environment: Manufacturing lines, warehouses, retail backrooms, maintenance areas and high-mix production environments.
Deployment model: Robot platform development using real-time AI, perception and adaptable manipulation for changing workflows.
Customer context: Manufacturers, logistics operators, retail users, industrial customers and teams seeking flexible physical automation.
Workflow context: Heavy lifting, stacking, delicate handling, assembly, component transfer, inspection and machine feeding.
Commercial maturity: Early-stage robotics company with public product and capability positioning. Scaling depends on reliable task performance, customer pilots, support capacity, and a clear route from demonstrated capa…
Market position: Industrial robotics company building adaptable robots for variable production and logistics tasks.
Adoption constraints: Adoption depends on task reliability, payload and dexterity, site integration, safety, customer validation and production readiness.
Adjacent context: Adjacent context includes adaptive industrial robots, mobile manipulation, flexible manufacturing and physical AI workcells.
Source confidence: high

Events

2026-06-22 - Acquisition - Bear Robotics signs definitive agreement to acquire Kinisi Robotics - Kinisi is the Bristol-based startup behind KR1, a wheeled humanoid for pick, place, sort and object-moving workflows. The acquisition adds manipulation AI, including VLA and Robot Foundation Model work, to Bear’s deployed service-robot platform. The companies…
2026-03-09 - Capability - Kinisi KR1 demonstrates learning-based handling through towel-folding task - Kinisi Robotics demonstrated KR1 performing a towel-folding task using learning-based handling rather than a fixed industrial routine. The demonstration showed the robot manipulating deformable household material, a harder class of task than rigid pick-and-pl…
2025-11-25 - Deployment - Kinisi Robotics deploys KR1 wheeled semi-humanoid for glass bottle sorting in the UK - Kinisi Robotics deployed its KR1 wheeled semi-humanoid at a UK customer site to sort glass bottles for reuse. The robot operates on a sorting line and uses computer vision and machine learning to classify bottles by shape, size and material. Kinisi said the s…
2025-11-25 - Deployment - Kinisi Robotics Deploys Wheeled Humanoid for Glass Sorting - Kinisi Robotics deployed its first mobile manipulation system into a commercial glass recycling facility. The deployment marks the first time the Kinisi 01 (KR1) is performing live production work inside a customer site. The robot uses computer vision and mac…
2025-07-14 - Product Launch - Kinisi Robotics unveils KR1 wheeled humanoid for warehouse and industrial tasks - Kinisi Robotics introduced KR1 as a wheeled humanoid-style robot for warehouse and industrial manipulation tasks. The platform was positioned for pick-and-place, loading, transporting and handling workflows in dynamic environments. KR1 uses a wheeled base rat…

Team

Bren Pierce - Founder

Relationships

Bear Robotics - Acquirer - Bear Robotics agreed to acquire Kinisi Robotics, adding KR1 humanoid manipulation and Physical AI model work.

Articles

2025-07-21 - Kinisi builds KR1 around practical warehouse humanoids - The robotics startup is building KR1 as a wheeled humanoid for logistics and manufacturing tasks, with onboard intelligence, hot-swappable batteries…

Kinisi canonical Korthos profile