Otto Group and Sereact are deploying up to 25 NVIDIA-powered, AI-controlled robots in a logistics centre to handle returned items, a labour-intensive task. The robots run on Sereact's Cortex Physical AI and can process items without specific prior training. NVIDIA's systems helped with simulation and testing. Otto Group will deploy the system in two phases to judge whether it can work at large scale. NVIDIA last closed at $217.94, up 0.9%. Advanced Micro Devices rose 5.5% to $560.26 after announcing a partnership with Meta Platforms on AI infrastructure. Broadcom gained 4% to $342.33, and Micron Technology rose 2.8% to $928.76.

Teradyne Robotics and Sereact partner to drive physical AI solutions for retail and logistics. Discover more Industrial Robot Parts Automation Software Solutions Humanoid Robot Development Teradyne Robotics and Sereact have formed a partnership to combine Sereact's physical AI technology with Universal Robots' collaborative robots for applications in retail, logistics and manufacturing. The partnership pairs Sereact's physical AI platform with collaborative industrial robots from Universal Robots to bring intelligent, adaptable automation to real-world operations previously hard to automate, such as the processing of returned fashion items. Teradyne Robotics - the company behind Universal Robots and Mobile Industrial Robots - and Sereact, a pioneer in physical AI for robotics, today announced a new, official partnership to accelerate industrial AI solutions in retail, logistics and manufacturing at Nvidia GTC Berlin 2026. Through this partnership, Sereact's physical AI platform, Cortex, runs robot arms from Universal Robots to give retailers and logistics providers a proven way to automate unstructured tasks such as returns handling and piece-picking. Together, the companies have already shipped hundreds of UR robots in dual-arm systems to live customer sites including Zalando across Europe. Discover more Manufacturing Automation Services Source Robotics Jacob Pascual Pape, chief commercial officer of Teradyne Robotics, says: "Physical AI only matters when it performs in real-world operations, and that is where Universal Robots has always been at home. "Its robots are built for the AI era: open, connected and proven through more than 100,000 industrial deployments. That is why Sereact has chosen its platform. "When combined with Sereact's Cortex, the joint solution handles mixed goods, unknown items, and varied packaging. This has moved well beyond the demo or pilot stage with the technology now usefully deployed at real customer sites. "Our technologies are a natural fit and through our partnership we will scale these AI-powered solutions fast across applications, industries and markets." To serve the rapidly growing demand, Sereact this summer opened a US HQ in Boston, Massachusetts, to also bring the joint solution to North America. One model, many applications. The Sereact and Teradyne Robotics solutions deliver impact across a variety of critical logistics and manufacturing use cases, including returns handling, store replenishment, piece-picking and sortation, order induction, machine tending, bin consolidation, kitting, packing and goods handling. Dr Ralf Gulde, CEO and co-founder, Sereact, says: "Returns, replenishment, kitting: with Cortex, every one of these applications runs on the same production model. One brain serves every robot, with no retraining for each new item or task. And what one robot learns, every robot benefits from. "Partnering with Teradyne Robotics and its global distribution and integrator network helps us bring that one brain to their customers around the world, accelerating the abilities of retailers and logistics providers to adopt AI-powered automation across their operations." Live at Nvidia GTC Berlin. The companies are marking the partnership with a joint demo at this week's Nvidia GTC Berlin 2026. In the Nvidia booth, Cortex, Sereact's Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model, runs on two Universal Robots UR12e-1300s to show a returns handling application that is already implemented in live logistics centers. The deployments are done in collaboration with CEVA Logistics for Zalando, a European technology platform for fashion and lifestyle, connecting 62 million active customers with more than 7,000 brands across 29 markets. At Zalando's fulfillment centers in Greven, Germany, and Świebodzin, Poland, the robots now autonomously process returned fashion items. This is the first phase of a broader initiative to scale returns automation across Europe. Dr Gulde says: "Returns are one of the hardest jobs in logistics. Returned products almost never arrive in a robot-friendly sequence. Items differ in shape, orientation and packaging, and the mix changes continuously. That is exactly what Cortex is built to handle on the Universal Robots platform. "By rapidly reconditioning returned goods for resale, the solution also helps retailers comply with European Union regulations prohibiting the destruction or landfill disposal of returned merchandise." Powered by Nvidia technologies. Nvidia's technologies are a key part of the Sereact and Universal Robots demo at GTC Berlin. Cortex is trained in Nvidia Isaac Sim, an open simulation framework, using Nvidia Cosmos open world models. It is post-trained with reinforcement learning using Nvidia Isaac Lab framework and benchmarked on Teradyne Robotics hardware before any model is deployed. In deployment, Cortex runs on Nvidia Jetson Thor at the cell where inference must happen at line speed, and on Nvidia DGX Spark for site-level development, validation and model updates. Teradyne Robotics also uses Nvidia computing in its UR and MiR product ranges. Teradyne Robotics are contributing SimReady OpenUSD robot assets to SimReady Central Library on Hugging Face for both Universal Robots and MiR products, helping developers discover and reuse robot models in simulation with less asset preparation.

Otto Group and sereact bring nvidia-powered Physical AI to returns processing. October 28, 2026 03:00 ET | Source: Sereact The partners will deploy up to 25 AI-controlled robots in a two-phase approach at an Otto Group logistics center to test the automatic processing of returned items At a glance * At Otto Group's logistics center in Poland, returns will be grasped, identified, assessed, and sorted by up to 25 AI-controlled dual-arm robots from Sereact. * The robots run on Cortex, Sereact's Physical AI model, which can recognize and handle items it has never encountered - no product-specific teaching, no fixed item catalog. * Cortex is trained and validated with NVIDIA Isaac Sim, NVIDIA Isaac Lab and NVIDIA Cosmos, so lessons from the returns line reach the robots in days, not weeks. * Under a Robotics-as-a-Service model, Sereact operates and maintains the systems. Employees hand over repetitive grasping and lifting and take on supervision, exception handling and quality checks. HAMBURG, Germany and STUTTGART, Germany, Oct. 28, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - Otto Group and robotics software company Sereact today announced a two-phase approach for AI-controlled robots in one of retail's most complex manual tasks: inspecting and sorting returned customer orders. Initially, ten AI-controlled dual-arm systems will be deployed at Otto Group's logistics center in Poland. In a second phase, 15 more robotic arms are planned to be added based on initial results, scaling the program to a total of 25. The two companies are jointly developing and refining the technology as part of the project, with Otto Group evaluating the potential for a broader rollout across its logistics network if the second phase is successful. Few processes in e-commerce are as hard to automate as returns - items come back folded, crumpled, repackaged, and the assortment of a multi-category retailer never stops changing. Traditional automation depends on known products and predictable presentation, neither of which exists in returns. Cortex, Sereact's Physical AI model, is built for exactly this challenge: it generalizes objects it has never encountered and decides in real time how to grasp each item, assess its condition, and route it accordingly. Cortex is built on NVIDIA's physical AI stack. Sereact uses NVIDIA Isaac Sim and NVIDIA Isaac Lab to turn real picks from the returns line into thousands of simulated variants, and NVIDIA Cosmos world foundation models to re-render them across garment states, packaging, materials and lighting. New policies are post-trained on NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs and tested against held-out cases before they reach the robots. When a robot struggles with an item, the fix can come back as a tested update within days instead of weeks. The robots will be introduced in stages over the course of the project. Each stage will generate operational feedback that the partners can use to improve the systems and adapt them to the requirements of large-scale returns processing. This shared development process is intended to establish whether the technology can meet the reliability, flexibility, and quality standards required for broader use. Working hand in hand with robots, people stay at the center of the process: employees will shift away from repetitive grasping and lifting toward supervision, exception handling, and final quality decisions - tasks that depend on experience and judgment. "Our customers expect returns to be simple and fast - behind that lies a process that is time-critical and laborious, both for customers and for our business. Returns are notoriously hard to automate, and Physical AI has the potential to change that. This project lets us find out, at real scale, how far Physical AI can take us - an important step towards a more flexible and resilient supply chain," says Martin Umland, Group Vice President Supply Chain Management at Otto Group. "A robot that only knows yesterday's catalog is of little use in a returns center. Cortex has to deal with whatever comes out of the next parcel. Every return the systems handle makes the model better at the next one," Dr. Ralf Gulde, CEO and Co-Founder, Sereact. The partnership builds on Otto Group's series of investments in robotics across its logistics operations and forms part of the company's medium-term commitment to invest €350 million in technology and AI. About Sereact Sereact develops Physical AI software that enables robots to grasp, identify and handle objects they have never seen before. Founded in Stuttgart by Dr. Ralf Gulde and Marc Tuscher, the company raised a $116 million Series B in 2026. Customers include Otto Group, Zalando, IKEA, DHL, Rohlik, Arvato, alza.cz, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Daimler Truck. Find out more at sereact.ai About Otto Group With a strong heritage as a family business and firmly rooted values, the Otto Group is looking to the future with confidence. Over the past 75 and more years, the company has developed from a catalog-based mail order company into an international digital retail and services group with well over 30,000 employees and a large number of key companies, brands and holdings in over thirty countries, primarily in Germany, the rest of Europe and North America. In the 2025/26 financial year (28 February), the Otto Group generated revenues of 13.8 billion euros. As the largest online retailer of European origin, it is shaping the digital retail and digital services of the future by drawing on its strength, market significance and values. Driven by a passionate and entrepreneurial performance culture, the Group is exploiting its vast market expertise and technological competence to inspire its many millions of customers with high-quality products, unique choice of goods and an array of services. According to its own understanding, value-driven business practices and economic success are not mutually exclusive. Environmental protection has been one of the Otto Group's corporate objectives since 1986. In addition, the company takes environmental, social and digital aspects into account in its business activities and corporate decision-making. Press contacts * Sereact: [email protected] * Otto Group: Marina Lenz, [email protected], +49 40 6461 6389