PickNik
About
About PickNik
PickNik develops motion-planning and manipulation software for robotic arms and mobile manipulators. The company maintains major parts of the open-source MoveIt ecosystem and provides MoveIt Pro, a supported development platform for building, testing and deploying complex manipulation applications.
Its software covers collision-aware planning, inverse kinematics, grasping, teleoperation, calibration and integration with ROS 2 hardware. Engineers use the platform in industrial, aerospace, agriculture, laboratory and research systems where a robot must interact with varied objects or constrained spaces. PickNik also provides consulting, custom development, training and long-term support for production deployments.
Articles
Supply
Supply chain relationships
- Hivebotics
Outbound - Software - Hivebotics integrates PickNik MoveIt Pro motion planning into the Abluo bathroom-cleaning robot
Source
Funding
- 2023-10-12 - Pre-seed - $2M - PickNik raises $2M pre-seed round for MoveIt Studio
PickNik Robotics raised $2 million in pre-seed funding to further develop MoveIt Studio. - source: picknik.ai
Investors
- Cypress Growth Capital - Lead - VC - 1 funding event - first seen 2023-10-12
- Stellar Ventures - Lead - VC - 1 funding event - first seen 2023-10-12
Team
- Dave Grant - CEO - Leads PickNik's commercial and operating direction for MoveIt Pro and robotic arm applications.
- Jonathan Fries - Chief Operations Officer - Oversees operating execution for PickNik's robotics software delivery model.
- Dave Coleman - Chief Product Officer & Founder - Shapes PickNik's product direction for MoveIt Pro and robot-agnostic manipulation software.
- Nathan Brooks - Chief Technology Officer - Leads technical execution for PickNik's robot manipulation and autonomy software.
Timeline
Events
- 2026-09-23 - Acquisition - Qualcomm agrees to acquire PickNik
MoveIt 1 and 2 are expected to remain open-source, community-driven and usable on third-party hardware. Qualcomm plans tighter MoveIt and MoveIt Pro integration with Dragonwing robotics and Arduino platforms. The companies plan to show MoveIt Pro running on VENTUNO Q and Dragonwing platforms at ROSCon Toronto; closing remains subject to customary conditions.
Source - 2023-10-12 - Funding - PickNik raises $2M pre-seed round for MoveIt Studio
Stellar Ventures and Cypress Growth Capital led the investment. The capital supported PickNik robotic arm software development. The event adds operating or commercial context for warehouse automation and material-handling robotics.
Source
Relations
Relationships
- NVIDIA
Isaac Manipulator Partner - PickNik Robotics is an NVIDIA Isaac Manipulator ecosystem partner.
- Motiv Space Systems
Space Robotics Partner - PickNik and Motiv partnered on advanced robot-arm capabilities.
- Cislunar Industries
Space Manufacturing Partner - PickNik and CisLunar collaborated on in-space metal processing.
- RE2 Robotics
Mobile Manipulation Partner - PickNik and RE2 partnered on autonomous mobile manipulation.
Context
Comparable profiles
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- Covariant
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Context tags
- Autonomy software platform - Stack Layer - Profile QA supports Autonomy software platform.
- Robot learning platforms - Stack Layer - Profile QA supports Robot learning platforms.