Aldebaran

Aldebaran Robotics was set up in Paris in 2005 by Bruno Maisonnier, with work on the small NAO humanoid already under way from 2004. The first production NAO shipped to RoboCup teams in 2008 and to the public in 2011. Intel Capital led a USD 13 million round in 2011. SoftBank bought control in 2012 for about USD 100 million, had it design the wheeled Pepper launched in Japan in 2014, and renamed it SoftBank Robotics Europe in 2015.

The Robot Report puts lifetime sales at about 20,000 NAO units and 17,000 Pepper units across 70 countries, but Pepper production stopped around 2020 or 2021 and neither robot had a major hardware update after 2018. In 2022 SoftBank sold the unit, then about 330 people, to Germany's United Robotics Group, which cut nearly half the staff and restored the Aldebaran name.

URG stopped funding the business in 2024 after an operating loss reported at USD 29 million. Aldebaran filed for insolvency in mid February 2025, cut nearly half its remaining staff in April and was placed in receivership on 2 June 2025. In July 2025 the Chinese company Maxvision Technology bought the core NAO and Pepper assets and IP and set up a French subsidiary, Maxtronics, which builds and supports NAO6 with some former staff. Pepper is not back in production.