Soft Robotics Inc. announced the divestiture of its gripper business assets to the Schmalz Group for an undisclosed sum. The company also announced that it has reformed as Oxipital AI, with a mission to deliver its transformative AI technology to customers in critical industries, enabling an entirely new generation of resilient, efficient, and sustainable manufacturing.

The divestiture of the company’s gripper hardware business marks a significant milestone in its 10-year evolution. It enables the company to focus its resources and expertise on advancing the commercialization of its groundbreaking end-to-end visual AI solutions optimized for high-speed product inspection and robotic picking.

"For years, our AI vision solutions have enabled the automation of labor-intensive processes in the food industry," said Mark Chiappetta, president and CEO of Oxipital AI. "Although under a new banner, we remain steadfast in our commitment to customers as they embrace Industry 5.0, and in providing the AI technology they need to unlock previously unattainable levels of resiliency, sustainability, and resource efficiency in their manufacturing operations."

The company will launch with a new corporate identity and a focused commitment to driving innovation in machine vision and AI. “The Oxipital AI brand name was selected because it aligns more closely with the technology, paying homage to the visual processing center of the human brain,” said Austin Harvey, vice president of product and marketing at the company. “Our vision solutions unlock latent process inefficiencies through deep object understanding and provide a previously unavailable pathway to further increase manufacturing yield, throughput, and margins, while reducing product waste and ecological footprint.”