The bankers and private equity funds were the first to hear the pitch. Bear Robotics, the California robot maker controlled by LG Electronics, has begun a pre-IPO funding round as it prepares for a potential listing on the Nasdaq, according to investment banking sources cited by South Korea’s Korea Economic Daily. Bank of America has been tapped to arrange the round and is sounding out domestic and foreign institutional investors.
The terms under discussion give a sense of how far the company’s ambitions have grown. Bear Robotics is seeking to raise 300 billion to 400 billion won, roughly $225 million to $300 million, at a valuation around 2 trillion won, or about $1.5 billion. The proceeds are earmarked for robotics research and development. The valuation under discussion would be more than double what the company commanded in its last private round.
Bear Robotics was founded in 2017 in the United States and built its name on Servi, the tray-carrying serving robot that glides through restaurants carrying plates and drinks. The hospitality business remains its main source of revenue, but the company has been pushing into industrial territory, selling autonomous mobile robots for logistics warehouses and talking up what it calls physical AI, machines that do not just move but pick up and handle objects.
LG’s involvement deepened in stages. The Korean electronics giant invested $60 million in 2024 for a 21 percent stake, then exercised a call option last year to take control, spending roughly 340 billion won in cash in the process. Its stake stood at 56.9 percent at the end of the first half of this year. LG has described Bear Robotics as the vehicle for its global robotics ambitions, folding the group’s robot work into the startup rather than building a rival business in-house.
The financial picture explains the need for capital. Bear Robotics reported revenue of 17 billion won and a net loss of 42.2 billion won for the roughly eight months from May 7 to the end of last year, the period since LG consolidated the company onto its books. The company is spending heavily on development while its serving-robot base, around 16,000 machines deployed in restaurants and warehouses, produces revenue that does not yet cover the bills.
The expansion strategy has been acquisition-driven as well as organic. In June, Bear Robotics bought Kinisi Robotics, a British startup that makes robot arms capable of manipulation, adding the piece of the puzzle the company needs for warehouse and factory work that goes beyond carrying. Bringing manipulation technology in-house is a statement of intent: the company wants to move up the value chain from mobile carts to machines that do real work.
A Nasdaq listing would put Bear Robotics in the same investor conversation as a crowded field of American robotics companies, many of them loss-making and valued on promise rather than profit. The listing would also test the market’s appetite for a company whose largest shareholder is a Korean electronics giant, at a moment when robotics valuations have swung between euphoria and doubt.
There are complications closer to home. LG Electronics is itself listed in Seoul, and Korean regulators have taken a cautious line on conglomerates spinning out majority-owned overseas subsidiaries, requiring parent boards to weigh the impact on their own shareholders. LG said Sunday, in a regulatory filing responding to the reports, that no final decision had been made about an overseas listing for Bear Robotics, and that it would disclose again once details were settled.
The market did not wait for the filing. LG’s shares jumped more than 8 percent in Seoul trading on Monday morning on the news of the pre-IPO round, a reminder of how closely investors tie the parent’s fortunes to the robotics subsidiary. The rally also shows the value the market already assigns to the Bear Robotics stake, one of the clearer ways for investors to buy exposure to the robot boom through an established company.
For Bear Robotics itself, the round is a bridge between two worlds. The company has operated like a venture-backed Silicon Valley startup, raising from strategics and institutions, while carrying the costs of a hardware business that ships tens of thousands of units. A successful pre-IPO round at a doubled valuation would set the price anchor for a listing, and the choice of Bank of America to arrange it signals the company expects the eventual offering to be sold to American institutions.
The underlying bet is on the spread of robots beyond the restaurant floor. Serving robots proved the technology could work in daily commercial use, but the margins are thin and the market crowded. The industrial and physical-AI businesses are where the valuation growth is supposed to come from, and the 2 trillion won target price assumes investors believe that story. Whether they do will show in how fast the round closes, and at what valuation LG’s board ultimately agrees to sign.
