The Riser mobile manipulator was one of Rethink Robotics’ last releases. Source: Rethink Robotics
Rethink Robotics Inc., which rose as a force- and power-limited arm pioneer, has shut down for a second time.
“Unfortunately, Rethink Robotics died a second time,” Julia Astrid Riemenschneider, former CEO of Rethink, told The Robot Report. “After the first bankruptcy in 2018, the company was acquired by Hahn Automation Group and later became part of United Robotics Group.”
Rethink had named Riemenschneider as CEO, alongside Franziska Lorenz as chief operations officer, in December 2024. They stayed in those roles until August 2025.
Rethink Robotics’ saga spans almost two decades
Robotics innovators Rodney Brooks and Ann Whittaker co-founded Heartland Robotics in 2008 with the intent of creating low-cost robots. In 2012, the then-Boston-based company renamed itself Rethink Robotics and launched the two-armed Baxter, one of the first so-called collaborative robots. It was initially popular with researchers.
In 2015, Rethink released Sawyer, a one-armed cobot with a smaller design and greater programming flexibility. It raised $150 million along the way. However, Rethink’s robots suffered from nagging problems with precision and repeatability because of the choice of series elastic actuators.
In 2018, Rethink went bankrupt, and HAHN Group acquired its intellectual property (IP). HAHN Robotics planned to “apply German engineering” to refurbish the cobots. In the meantime, Denmark’s Universal Robots had become the market leader, and even industrial automation providers that had once scoffed at the category had announced their own offerings.
By September 2024, United Robotics Group (URG) relaunched Rethink and returned the company from Germany to the U.S. However, its latest Reacher robot arms, Ryder autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), and Riser mobile manipulator robots (MMRs) brought new challenges.
“At the end of 2024, United Robotics Group relaunched Rethink Robotics with the portfolio of white-labeled cobots, AMRs, and MMRs from a German robot startup,” explained Riemenschneider. “Unfortunately, the products weren’t ready to be released, so sales was behind plan. At the same time, the investors of United Robotics Group decided to pull back their funds and let the group file bankruptcy, which led to the discontinuation of Rethink Robotics in the U.S.”
URG last year also declined to continue funding service robot maker Aldebaran, which shut down in February 2025. In July, Maxvision Technology Corp. acquired the core assets related to Aldebaran’s flagship robots, Nao and Pepper.
The Sawyer (left) and Baxter collaborative robots. Source: Rethink Robotics
Quo vadis for cobots?
“It’s been tough and maybe the hardest job I ever had to work on,” Riemenschneider said. “We launched at IMTS in Chicago in September in 2024, and as we were ramping up between three events in January/February 2025, things started going down.”
“I just had hired new staff and invested heavily into marketing and stock,” she added. “[It was] heartbreaking to let go on a team that was all in an excited to help Americas manufacturing industry to automate.”
The fate of Hebron, Ky.-based Rethink Robotics’ IP and latest models has not yet been announced. Still, Interact Analysis predicted that the cobot market “having hit a cyclical rock bottom in 2024, is poised for a new growth cycle.”
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