Sereact GmbH, which provides artificial intelligence-driven workcells for warehouse order picking, this week opened its U.S. headquarters in Charlestown, Mass. The company said its Cortex 2.0 software offers “One brain. Any robot.”
CEO Ralf Gulde co-founded Sereact based on vision and embodied AI research out of the University of Stuttgart in 2021. “We wanted to make robots more intelligent and flexible,” he recalled during the grand opening.
In 2023, the company released PickGPT, a robotics transformer that combined large language models (LLMs) with computer vision. It earned a 2024 RBR50 Robotics Innovation Award for the use of LMMs with robotics.
The company realized that picking diverse objects was not just a vision problem, and it launched Cortex in 2025. As in the Sereact name, the system combined sight, reasoning, and acting, and it could anticipate outcomes, said Gulde.
Cortex 2.0 and other technologies developed in house
In February 2026, Sereact released Cortex 2.0, which Gulde said is the successor to PickGPT and has unlocked more complex use cases. The company now has more than 200 systems live and has conducted a total of over 1 billion picks, with only one in 53,000 requiring human assistance for greater than 99% picking success on the first grasp.
With Cortex, robots can share learning, added Mason Cole, director of sales for North America at Sereact. The company’s Lens product provides AI vision for identifying and dimensioning items.
Cameras developed in house also collect data for quality assurance and training for zero-shot picking. This can help with traceability and returns handling, explained Jonathan Gebhardt, vice president for North America at Sereact.
At its Charlestown facility, Sereact demonstrated one- and two-armed workcells using a variety of robot arms for pick and place operations. Some used compliant grippers, but for suction cups, the company has developed a system that can apply multiple suction cups rather than needing a tool changer to manipulate items ranging from cosmetic tubes to bagged apparel.
Cortex 2.0 provides “human-level perception” and enables up to 600 units picked per hour (UPH), asserted Sereact. The company is also looking at mobile manipulation.
Customers give feedback, find rapid improvement
“Our go-to-market strategy is based on earning customers’ trust,” noted Eric Hovan, strategic accounts at Sereact. The company’s commercial customers include Daimler Truck, digital grocer Rohlik Group, and third-party logistics provider (3PL) DeltiLog.
“We started with one unit and saw rapid improvement,” said Mathias Schenk, CEO of DeltiLog. “When two workstations had only 95% performance, we called the CTO, and he came and fixed the problem himself. We had seven systems doing densification at peak, and the average service response time was 10 minutes instead of the usual one hour.”
“The market decided for us whether to automate,” noted Vincent Meyer, head of warehouse planning at Rohlik. “Germany has high labor rates and expectations of 15-minute deliveries. We also had to overcome failed pilots to convince leadership.”
“We developed systems together, and Sereact’s team never shied away from a challenge,” Meyer added. “It achieved groundbreaking handling of different items with graspable surfaces only 3 cm [1.1 in.] in diameter. Sereact also integrated with our WMS and WCS and partnered with Veloq and AutoStore.”
Both DeltiLog and Rohlik were very direct with their feedback, noted Alfred Larsson, director of strategic accounts at Sereact. “Sometimes, the customers with the most tickets are the happiest, because they care and want to improve things,” he said.
Both customers said that feature requests and robot support requests were about equal. What would they do differently if they knew what they know now?
“I would take more time on integration with AutoStore and our own WMS,” said Schenk.
“I would have spent more time on change management,” replied Meyer. “We underestimated the time for multivendor operations. Only if a system performs on the shop floor for weeks is its successful.”
It took both companies about six months from pilot to production, and two weeks to expand their deployments. Key performance indicators included picking operations at night, when extra shifts are expensive, said Meyer.
Boston provides a prime location for Sereact
In April, Sereact raised $110 million in Series B funding after raising about $25 million last year. The company is spending $40 million on its North American expansion, according to Gebhardt.
Why the Boston area? Sereact Inc.’s leadership noted the proximity to word-class talent coming out of MIT, Harvard, and Northeastern University, as well as the ecosystem support and leadership of MassRobotics.
The company has started with 10 staffers in its Charlestown office and expects to expand to up to 60 in the next 12 months. Its new site is in Hood Park, once a dairy factory that Gebhardt said “has a good vibe.”
Most product development will stay in Germany, but Sereact plans to provide full delivery, demonstrations, support, and scaling from Hood Park. The new facility includes space for gripper refurbishment, customer testing, and rapid order fulfillment.
