aid: covariant
name: Covariant
description: >-
  Covariant is an Emeryville, California warehouse-robotics AI company founded
  in 2017 (originally as Embodied Intelligence) by UC Berkeley professor
  Pieter Abbeel and his former students Peter Chen, Rocky Duan, and Tianhao
  Zhang. The company builds the Covariant Brain, a universal AI platform that
  enables industrial picking robots to handle virtually any SKU regardless of
  shape, size, or packaging, and in March 2024 it introduced RFM-1
  (Robotics Foundation Model 1), an 8-billion-parameter multimodal transformer
  trained on text, images, video, robot actions, and numerical sensor
  readings to give robots human-like reasoning over the physical world.
  Covariant ships AI-powered solutions for order picking, sortation, item
  induction, kitting, depalletization, and goods-to-person workflows,
  delivered through long-running integration partnerships with KNAPP
  (Pick-it-Easy Robot, since 2020) and ABB (warehouse robotics, since 2020),
  as well as deployments with retailers and logistics providers worldwide.
  In August 2024, Amazon announced a non-exclusive license to Covariant's
  robotic foundation models and hired its three co-founders along with
  roughly a quarter of its workforce in a reverse-acquihire arrangement;
  Covariant continues to operate independently under COO-turned-CEO Ted
  Stinson and co-founder Tianhao Zhang. The Covariant Brain and RFM-1 are
  proprietary, deployed on-premise on partner robotics hardware, and the
  company has no public developer API, SDK, open-source release, or
  third-party developer program.
type: Index
position: Provider
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
tags:
  - Robotics
  - Warehouse Robotics
  - Warehouse Automation
  - Industrial Robotics
  - AI Robotics
  - Embodied AI
  - Foundation Models
  - Robotics Foundation Model
  - RFM-1
  - Covariant Brain
  - Picking Robots
  - Depalletization
  - Sortation
  - Goods-to-Person
  - Logistics
  - Supply Chain
  - Manufacturing
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/covariant/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-05-24'
modified: '2026-05-24'
specificationVersion: '0.20'
apis: []
common:
  - type: DomainSecurity
    url: security/covariant-domain-security.yml
  - type: Website
    url: https://covariant.ai
  - type: CovariantBrain
    url: https://covariant.ai/covariant-brain/
  - type: Research
    url: https://covariant.ai/research/
  - type: About
    url: https://covariant.ai/about-us/
  - type: Resources
    url: https://covariant.ai/resources/
  - type: AutomationSolutions
    url: https://covariant.ai/resources/automation-solutions/
  - type: Blog
    url: https://covariant.ai/resources/blog/
  - type: Insights
    url: https://covariant.ai/insights/
  - type: GoodsToPersonPicking
    url: https://covariant.ai/robotic-goods-to-person-picking/
  - type: Depalletization
    url: https://covariant.ai/robotic-depalletization/
  - type: RFM1Announcement
    url: https://covariant.ai/covariant-introduces-rfm-1-to-give-robots-the-human-like-ability-to-reason/
  - type: KNAPPPartnership
    url: https://covariant.ai/knapp-and-covariant-extend-their-success-story/
  - type: Contact
    url: https://covariant.ai/contact/
  - type: LinkedIn
    url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/covariantai
  - type: Twitter
    url: https://twitter.com/CovariantAI
  - type: Medium
    url: https://medium.com/covariant-ai
  - type: Wikipedia
    url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covariant_(company)
  - type: CrunchbasePieterAbbeel
    url: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/pieter-abbeel
  - type: AmazonLicensingNews
    url: https://www.geekwire.com/2024/amazon-hires-covariant-founders-inks-licensing-deal-with-robotics-ai-startup-in-latest-reverse-acquihire-deal/
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com