The company, which develops AI and robots for autonomous truck unloading, is also expanding partnerships with key AI research centers and robotics labs at prominent universities Columbia, Harvard and MIT
Pickle Robot Unloading a Messy Trailer
Pickle Robot Unloading Electronics
Pickle Robot’s VP of Engineering – Fred Hopke
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 24, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Pickle Robot, the pioneer in Physical AI automation for the supply chain, today announced Fred Hopke as its new Vice President of Engineering and unveiled plans to hire 50 additional engineers over the next four months. The strategic expansion supports rapid growth in customer demand and deployment of Pickle’s intelligent robotic systems across logistics operations.
Fred Hopke joins Pickle with extensive experience leading engineering teams at Verve Motion, Symbotic and SharkNinja, where Hopke built and scaled high-performance systems at the intersection of robotics and AI.
“Our customers need automation that works at human scale or better—and they need it now, not years from now,” said AJ Meyer, CEO and Founder of Pickle Robot Company. “We designed Pickle to start at the dock door because that’s where every item enters the warehouse. By capturing structured data at the point of entry and physically handling goods from the first touch, we create a foundation that connects seamlessly to the entire automation ecosystem—from storage and picking to outbound logistics. We are accelerating our tech development and deepening integrations across other robotics systems used for palletizing, sorting and picking to deliver even more value to our customers as we scale.”
The hiring expansion is enabling Pickle Robot to move even faster to build robots for customers globally.
“Pickle is solving one of the most meaningful and technically complex challenges in automation—bringing intelligent robotics into the messy, physical world of logistics and particularly to truck unloading,” said Fred Hopke, Pickle’s new VP of Engineering. “I’m excited to help scale this technology and grow a world-class engineering organization to accelerate the company’s bold vision.”
Co-Founded by Meyer—an MIT alum and serial entrepreneur—Pickle is the leader in physical AI which combines AI with robotics to perform physically demanding tasks like unloading trucks and containers, increasing both safety and productivity for warehouse operations.
Pickle Robot is also expanding its collaboration with prominent researchers in Physical AI and Robotics. Pickle is working with Professor Yilun Du at the Harvard AI and Robotics Lab whose research is driven by the goal of developing intelligent embodied agents in the physical world. Pickle is also beginning to collaborate with Columbia’s Yunzhu Li whose work is at the intersection of robotics, computer vision, and machine learning. Specifically, focusing on robotic learning to expand robots’ perception and physical interaction capabilities such as touch sensing, and simulating complex physics from data. Pickle is partnering with Russ Tedrake of MIT who leads the Robot Locomotion Group at MIT CSAIL focused on building machines that utilize their natural dynamics to achieve extraordinary agility, efficiency, and robustness using rigorous tools from dynamical systems, control theory, and machine learning.
“Pickle Robot was born out of the vision and technical foundation we developed at MIT—so it’s only natural that we’re now deepening our collaboration with some of the brightest minds at universities advancing the frontier of physical AI,” Meyer added. “By working alongside researchers like Yilun Du, Yunzhu Li, and Russ Tedrake, we’re deepening our ability to deliver intelligent, human-scale automation that can adapt to the real-world complexity our customers face every day.”
About Pickle Robot Company
Pickle Robot is the leader in Physical AI, combining AI with robotics to create automation products that perform physical labor with intelligence and adaptability. The company’s systems are currently transforming how goods are unloaded in warehouses with a goal of reaching one million dock doors with its robotic systems over the next decade—improving safety, efficiency, and scalability in supply chain operations.
Learn more at www.picklerobot.com.
Contact
Pia Arthur
512-761-0358
pia@cuore.co
Photos accompanying this announcement are available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/26feea68-5469-4973-8c8a-35748666cf52
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