Pudu, a global robotics company based in China, has opened a new U.S. headquarters in Richardson as part of a larger strategy to extend the company’s reach, the company announced this week.
“We are building for the long-term in the Americas with a localized approach,” Raymond Pan, Pudu’s general manager of the Americas, said in a statement. “Our new headquarters and infrastructure optimization provide a solid foundation for this ambition.”
The headquarters, which the company officially opened last week, is inside the Sherman Tech Center in Richardson, a 16,000-square-foot property that includes a showroom and warehouse space.
Pudu was founded in Shenzhen, China, in 2016 as a company focused on building food delivery robots. Since then it’s grown into a major player in the broader commercial service robotics sector, building a variety of hospitality and industrial-oriented robots that have been adopted by Walmart, NASA and Norwegian Cruise Line, among other companies. A newer series of robots from the company is also focused on embodied AI.
The company entered the U.S. market in 2018 and already has a subsidiary in Silicon Valley, as well as locations in South Korea, Japan, Singapore and the Netherlands. Its headquarters and manufacturing base remains in China.
The U.S. headquarters announcement comes as D-FW continues to cement its place as among the country’s top destinations for corporate relocations. Earlier this month one report, from the real estate firm CBRE, found that North Texas had gained a net of 11 new headquarters from out of state last year, the most of any American metro area.
The metro region has also been gaining traction as a tech hub, with many area business leaders also pushing for D-FW to become a hotbed of AI.
A representative for Pudu did not respond to an interview request from The Dallas Morning News about its new U.S. headquarters.