Oversonic Robotics
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Oversonic Robotics is an Italian robotics company that builds cognitive humanoid robots powered by artificial intelligence. Founded in 2020 by Fabio Puglia and Paolo Denti, the company is headquartered in Carate Brianza, Lombardy, with offices in Milan, Rovereto (Trentino) and Hamilton, Ohio. Its flagship product, RoBee, is marketed as the only humanoid robot certified for both industrial and healthcare use and has been adopted by STMicroelectronics for deployment in semiconductor plants. Oversonic positions itself as a software-first business, treating the humanoid as a delivery surface for a modular cognitive AI platform.[1][2]
Oversonic Robotics was founded in 2020 in Besana Brianza, in the Brianza area north of Milan. Fabio Puglia, the president, holds a degree in Physics and Mathematics (Astrophysics) from the University of Milan and earlier founded ISC, a Carate Brianza heat-recovery company he presented at a NASA-organized ICT congress in Pasadena. Paolo Denti, the chief executive, graduated in Economic Statistics at the University of Padua and earned a Master's in International Marketing and Sales in Scotland. Before Oversonic he held senior roles at Benetton Sportsystem USA, Nordica and the Tecnica Group, and served as chief executive of Thun SpA from 2008 to 2018. The two met in 2019, and their combined background in robotics and industrial management became the foundation for the company.[2][3]
The business was originally set up as a software company specializing in cognitive computing for robotics, with explicit emphasis on culture and empathy in human-robot interaction. That software-first identity has shaped product decisions since. In 2022 the company adopted Benefit Company status under Italian law, which requires the firm to pursue specified public benefit goals alongside profit.[1][4]
The RoBee humanoid entered the market in 2023 and was promoted as the first humanoid robot certified to operate in manufacturing facilities under an Industry 5.0 model. By the end of that year Oversonic had closed a Series A round and brought in Datalogic, a Milan-listed industrial automation company, as a strategic shareholder. In November 2024 CB Insights named the company among the 13 "Leading Public Players in Humanoid Robotics" in its annual Tech Trends report, and LinkedIn included it on the 2024 Italian Top Startups list.[2][5][6]
In 2025 Oversonic partnered with SolidWorld Group, a listed Italian provider of 3D engineering technologies, for global distribution of RoBee. Later in 2025 the company signed a supply agreement with STMicroelectronics for custom RoBee humanoids in production and logistics at several ST plants worldwide. The first unit was deployed inside ST's advanced packaging and test facility in Malta, described as the first operational integration of cognitive humanoid robots in the semiconductor industry.[7][8]
In January 2026 Oversonic launched RoBee in the United States and used CES 2026 in Las Vegas as the international debut of the platform, showing the medical version inside the Intel pavilion and the industrial version in the STMicroelectronics exhibition area. The company also confirmed plans for a production line at the former Maserati industrial complex in Grugliasco, near Turin, targeting annual output of 5,000 robots once fully ramped.[9][10][11]
| Person | Role | Background |
|---|---|---|
| Fabio Puglia | President and co-founder | Physics and Mathematics (Astrophysics), University of Milan. Earlier ventures included ISC in Carate Brianza and international projects in water management and energy. |
| Paolo Denti | CEO and co-founder | Economic Statistics, University of Padua; Master's in International Marketing and Sales (Scotland). Former CEO of Thun SpA (2008-2018), executive at Benetton Sportsystem USA, general manager of Nordica, board member at Tecnica Group. |
The founding shareholders retain a controlling stake of roughly 70 percent. Other investors include Fintel (the Bulgarelli family vehicle), Giancarlo Locatelli (CEO of the Cosma group), and Datalogic.[7][12]
Oversonic has gone through a sequence of private rounds rather than one large raise. Crunchbase lists at least three disclosed rounds, including a Series A of about 5.5 million US dollars in July 2023 led by AVM Gestioni with Datalogic, followed by a Seed-III round in December 2023 when Datalogic acquired a minority stake. Public reporting around the Turin factory referenced cumulative investment above 30 million euros, including prior rounds, grants and shareholder commitments.[5][7][11][13]
| Round | Date | Lead investors | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Series A (approx. 5.5M USD) | July 2023 | AVM Gestioni, Datalogic | Used to scale RoBee commercialization and certification programs |
| Seed-III | December 2023 | Datalogic (minority stake) | Strategic partnership covering sales, R&D and marketing; Datalogic safety scanners and vision systems integrated into RoBee |
| Cumulative raise | by 2026 | Multiple | Total reported to exceed 30M EUR ahead of the Turin factory ramp |
Datalogic's involvement is the most operationally visible. Beyond capital, Datalogic supplies safety laser scanners and vision components that RoBee uses to monitor its surroundings and keep a safe distance from human co-workers, and the two firms collaborate on sales, research, and marketing. Datasensing, a Datalogic subsidiary, has hosted RoBee at trade events.[13][14]
RoBee is Oversonic's cognitive humanoid robot and the company's only product line. It is built around a mechanical structure that replicates the human body, with a torso, two arms with multi-finger hands, a head with vision and audio sensors, and a mobile base. Three series share the same software stack.[1][15]
| Series | Target use | Headline features |
|---|---|---|
| RoBee R | Industry, manufacturing, logistics | Up to 200 cm tall, structure rated for payloads up to about 180 kg, designed to load and unload machines, pack products, and pick and place objects of different sizes |
| RoBee M | Healthcare, rehabilitation, elderly care | Typically 175 cm tall, around 80 kg, focused on therapy reminders, cognitive stimulation, vital-sign monitoring and accompanying patients in care facilities |
| RoBee F | Intralogistics | Bimanual manipulation, omnidirectional autonomous base, rear module for transport and storage, optimized for moving materials in warehouses |
Reported specifications vary by configuration. A reference build for RoBee R lists a height around 190 cm, about 40 degrees of freedom (18 in the hands), brushless motors with strain-wave gearboxes, a top walking speed near 9 km/h, a grip force around 16 kg, IP64 ingress protection, and 5G or Wi-Fi connectivity. Battery life is rated at about eight hours per charge with inductive charging. The on-board compute originally combined an NVIDIA CPU and GPU running Linux with LLM integration. At CES 2026 Oversonic showed a refreshed RoBee running on Intel Core Ultra Series 3 edge processors, with speech, reasoning and selected vision tasks executed locally on the robot rather than in the cloud.[15][9]
Oversonic refers to its software stack as the Cognitive Platform, a modular AI ecosystem that runs on RoBee and integrates with external IT systems. It has six modules: Vision (RGB, depth, thermal and LiDAR fusion for 3D recognition), Conversation (speech recognition, response generation, multilingual support), Motion (joint control, force sensing, gait control), Navigation (SLAM with LiDAR and depth cameras, AMR and AGV modes), Missions (graph-based mission planning and fallback behaviors), and Monitoring & Analytics (telemetry, predictive maintenance, performance dashboards). The platform claims GDPR compliance and ISO 27001 certification for the cloud layer.[16]
RoBee holds the certifications required for industrial use in factories and the additional certifications needed to operate around patients in healthcare settings. The dual coverage is unusual; most humanoid robots are positioned for one sector at a time, and certification in either domain is expensive and slow. Oversonic uses the dual certification as a selling point because the same hardware can be redeployed across different customer types without a second compliance cycle.[1][7]
The technological and production center is on Via Galeazzo Viganò in Carate Brianza. The company designs, integrates and assembles current units there. The headquarters team is reported at about 65 people, including roughly 30 engineers covering mechanical design, electronics, software and AI.[2][7]
The Rovereto office sits inside the Mechatronic Hub run by Trentino Sviluppo, the public agency that develops the region's mechatronics cluster. It contributes to development work and gives Oversonic access to local automation suppliers and research labs.[2]
Oversonic has selected the former Maserati industrial complex in Grugliasco, near Turin, for a dedicated RoBee mass-production line, with a target output of 5,000 robots per year once the site is fully operational. The choice of Turin was tied to the AI4Industry national hub at OGR Torino, the local manufacturing supply base, and the availability of disused industrial sites such as Mirafiori TNE and the former Maserati plant.[11]
For the US launch in early 2026 Oversonic established a presence in Hamilton, Ohio, with additional locations planned for sales and field service in North America. The US strategy emphasizes healthcare and advanced manufacturing as first beachheads.[1][10]
The most significant customer announcement is the December 2025 supply agreement with STMicroelectronics for custom RoBee humanoids in several ST plants globally. The first unit went live at ST's advanced packaging and test fab in Malta. RoBee handles complex manufacturing flow tasks, supports new product introductions, improves quality and cycle time, and cooperates with industrial automation and agentic software systems. Fabio Puglia described the deployment as the first operational integration of cognitive humanoid robots into semiconductor production. Fabio Gualandris, ST's president of quality, manufacturing and technology, called humanoid integration the next frontier for advanced manufacturing. Two RoBee units appeared in the ST exhibition area at CES 2026.[7][8][9]
At CES 2026 Oversonic also appeared at Intel's Tech Showcase area in the Venetian, demonstrating a medical-series RoBee running on Intel Core Ultra Series 3 edge processors. Intel positioned the demo as a proof point for client-side AI workloads: RoBee runs speech, reasoning and select vision tasks locally, removing the need to send patient or factory data to the cloud and reducing latency for real-time tasks such as fall response or quality inspection.[9]
The RoBee M is deployed in hospitals and rehabilitation centers, where it reminds patients of medication and appointments, accompanies them on facility walks, runs cognitive-stimulation exercises for conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and monitors vital signs. The healthcare focus is unusual in commercial humanoid robotics and is tied to staff shortages in European elder care.[15][9]
Oversonic targets semiconductor, automotive, aerospace, pharmaceutical and healthcare buyers. SolidWorld Group is the global distribution partner, and Datalogic supplies sensors and joint go-to-market activity. Paolo Denti has said the company aims to grow international revenue from about five percent of sales in 2025 to roughly 50 percent in 2026, with Italy at 25 to 30 percent by 2027.[12][14][17]
Financial reporting on Oversonic is fragmentary because the company is privately held. In a January 2026 interview with Il Sole 24 ORE, Paolo Denti put 2025 revenue between 4.5 and 5 million euros and negative EBITDA of about 5.5 to 6 million euros, reflecting investment in product development, certification and the Turin factory. Denti said the company is targeting triple-digit growth in 2026 and a larger revenue base by 2030, and described the broader humanoid robotics market as around 3 billion US dollars today and expected to reach 40 billion within ten years.[12]
Oversonic's pitch is that it is a software company that happens to ship a humanoid. The hardware uses brushless motors, strain-wave gearing, depth cameras and lidar around a steel frame. The differentiator is the Cognitive Platform, a unified stack that maps perception, reasoning, language and motion into a single graph of capabilities the robot composes on demand. The same hardware can run factory pick-and-place tasks and patient companionship in a rehab ward, with policy and safety constraints loaded from configuration.[16]
The company also leans on edge processing for privacy and latency reasons. RoBee processes voice and a slice of vision on-device, using cloud services only for non-time-critical analytics. Chip-fab customers cannot tolerate latency or external data egress, and hospitals cannot send sensitive patient interactions to a generic cloud LLM. Whether the architecture scales to the more open-ended, dexterous tasks that competitors such as Figure, Apptronik, 1X and Unitree pursue is an open question.[8][9][16]
The company has been profiled in Italian and international business press, including Il Sole 24 ORE, Industria Italiana, FIRSTonline, and Engineering.com, and was widely covered in connection with the STMicroelectronics deal. CB Insights named Oversonic one of 13 leading public players in industrial humanoid robotics in its 2024 Tech Trends report, and LinkedIn listed the company on its 2024 Italian Top Startups list.[6][12][7]
Oversonic competes in a fast-growing humanoid robotics category, but its dual industrial and healthcare positioning is unusual. Competitors cited in sector coverage include Figure AI, Apptronik, 1X Technologies, Agility Robotics, Unitree Robotics, Boston Dynamics, and Sanctuary AI. Most focus on industrial logistics first; RoBee's medical certification gives Oversonic a different addressable market.[6]
| Location | Function |
|---|---|
| Carate Brianza (MB), Italy | Technology and production center, headquarters |
| Besana Brianza (MB), Italy | Original founding location |
| Milan, Italy | Representative office |
| Rovereto (Trento), Italy | Operational office, Mechatronic Hub of Trentino Sviluppo |
| Grugliasco (Turin), Italy | Planned mass-production factory, former Maserati site |
| Hamilton, Ohio, USA | US presence, launched January 2026 |