Colombia’s Robot.com is quietly building a global robotics empire

Earlier this year, a boxy, knee-high robot rolled past a handful of students at the University of California, Berkeley, campus, loaded with plush toy doughnuts and Yeti mugs. Moving at about three miles per hour, it paused at intersections, blinked its LED kawaii eyes, and beeped politely before continuing on its way.

Students greeted it with some degree of familiarity: it had been delivering food, books, and small packages to their residences for several years. What some of them didn’t know is that the Colombian company behind the robot, Kiwibot, has also expanded into warehouse logistics, advertising displays, and security and inspections. This month, it rebranded itself as Robot.com.

Robot.com’s fleet of over 500 robots, designed by Colombian engineers and assembled in Medellín, has been deployed across 30 U.S. states as well as Dubai and Saudi Arabia, where it services companies such as Careem, Jahez, and others. Last year, the startup that was set up in 2017, signed a multiyear partnership with Amazon Web Services, catapulting it into the big league of the global service robots market that is estimated at about $40 billion and forecast to grow quickly because of labor shortages.

“Robotics is going to transform many industries. … It’s a fantastic area for Latin American companies to enter,” Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington D.C.–based think tank, told Rest of World. “And I think they could do quite well” in terms of designing and assembling them.

Across the region, the robotics industry is slowly gaining traction. In Brazil, autonomous robots made by homegrown company Human Robotics greet and guide attendees at events. In Peru, Tumi Robotics has built robots that assist in tin and copper mines and help conduct oceanographic work.

Some of these companies are looking to grow abroad because of limited investment and adoption in Latin America. Aldo Luévano, the co-founder of Roomie, a Mexican robotics company that produces custom robots for security, customer service, and delivery, told Rest of World that it plans to expand to the U.S. next year. And Levita Magnetics in Chile, which is home to 25% of Latin America’s deep tech ecosystem, is developing surgical robots for hospitals in Chile and the U.S.

With little financial backing to develop hardware at home, Latin America has stood out for producing the brains behind the products rather than the factories that build them, Santiago Sinisterra, Robot.com’s chief marketing officer, told Rest of World. “That’s what a place like Colombia truly offers: highly skilled people, nearly on par with those in Silicon Valley.”

As early as 2016, a group of university students in Colombia founded Lulo, a drone delivery service. But “the batteries lasted only one or two hours and required more than five hours to recharge,” prompting the team to switch to ground robots, said Sinisterra. The team joined UC Berkeley’s flagship startup fast-track program, SkyDeck accelerator, to develop its robots. They founded Kiwibot in 2017.

Last year, the company acquired Auto, an AI chips company in Taiwan. Its technical team has also been traveling to Shenzhen and Shanghai to conduct research. Equipped with advanced GPS, modern lidar 3D sensors, and computer vision, the robots have a Level 4 autonomy — on par with leading U.S. and Chinese delivery robots, such as those from Starship Technologies and JD.com. This allows them to navigate precisely through cities while carrying up to 5.5 pounds of cargo.

Robot.com’s 400 workers are currently spread out across Latin America, the U.S., and Asia, with 30% of the workforce in Colombia. According to Felipe Chávez, one of the founders, the number of robotic tasks achieved by their fleet has ballooned from 300,000 during the company’s first seven years in operation to over 1 million during the last seven months.

While the steady growth of the company underscores the potential of the robotics industry in Latin America, it also highlights the challenges in a region with high production costs, limited investor confidence, and minimal public investment in science and technological development.

Colombia allocates just 0.25% of its GDP to research and development — a tiny fraction compared to countries like China and South Korea, which invest 2.6% and 5% respectively. And despite promises from Colombian President Gustavo Petro to boost science and technology support, the budget for this sector has fallen from $158 million in 2021 to $91 million in 2024.

“What future awaits a country that slashes investment in science, technology, and innovation during the fourth industrial revolution?” José Manuel Restrepo, the former minister of commerce, said on X recently.

It’s not just support from the state. Deep tech startups in Colombia face limited access to international acceleration programs, hampering their global potential, according to a 2024 report by Deep Tech Colombia, an alliance of civil society organizations working to scale up startups. The nearly 50 startups identified in the report have raised just $60 million over the past decade, and more than two-thirds are still in pre-seed or seed stages.

While Latin America has embraced fields like quantum computing, biotechnology, AI, and blockchain, inroads into hardware have been hindered by the lack of capital and a supportive ecosystem. 

“Investors looking at Latin America rarely back hardware developments because there’s no established culture or confidence around this industry,” Alejandro Serna, chief executive of Medellín-based robotics company ICRA, told Rest of World.

ICRA has been manufacturing custom-made robots that operate as receptionists, bellhops, and agricultural fumigation assistants in Colombia since 2016. Many of these applications came because clients demanded them, added Serna.

“We built whatever robots clients requested just to keep the lights on,” he said. “Maybe saying no would have been better strategically, but then the company might not have survived. It was a double-edged sword.”

Another Colombian company, Prótesis Avanzadas, manufactures robotic hands for export to Ecuador, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic. Its founder, Jorge Robledo, launched the company using his personal savings.

“I thought I could complete the entire project in six months, but the first prototype took me four years” because of a lack of resources, Robledo told Rest of World. Today, he produces two to four prosthetic hands monthly, priced at $5,000 each — undercutting German and even Chinese imports that sell for as much as $8,000, he said.

Casting a shadow over the region’s robotics startups is China, which gives significant government subsidies to tech companies, catalyzing private investment. The country dominates the global market for industrial and service robots, including in Latin America.

Only 2% of the 340 deep tech startups identified by the Inter-American Development Bank in Latin America in 2023 were dedicated to robotics, although decreasing technology costs will likely lower the barrier for companies to enter the sector.

For Robot.com, the lessons it is learning abroad could be key to its success back home. In September, Washington D.C.’s District Department of Transportation partnered with Robot.com to deploy small robots that detect infrastructure damage — such as broken sidewalks and faulty traffic signals — and report it in real time.

The company plans to launch its first local venture next year: a robot that will transport blood samples and medications at one of Bogotá’s top hospitals.