Philadelphia-based FORT Robotics announced it has entered into an agreement with Newbury Street II Acquisition Corp to combine their businesses and eventually take the combined company public.
FORT Robotics, a safety platform developing The Trust layer for Physical AI, said the combined company with Newbury Street will create the first publicly traded company dedicated to safe and scalable deployment of physical AI. The combined company will be named FORT Robotics Holdings, Inc. and is expected to be listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market (Nasdaq) under the new ticker symbol “FROB,” subject to regulatory approvals. Officials estimated the value of the combined company at around $556.6 million.
The combined company will serve as a universal safety layer across the robotics industry, officials said.
“Physical AI will change the way we work in every industry, and this will be a game changer for workers, organizations and governments worldwide,” Samuel Reeves, founder and CEO of FORT Robotics, said. “However, these new machines come with a completely new and different risk profile, and that must be addressed before autonomous systems can scale. FORT’s mission is to ‘ensure robots cause no harm’ and we are dedicated to pioneering and building a shared framework for trust that robot manufacturers, integrators, end users, regulators, insurers, governments and any other interested party can rely on. How we trust physical AI will be one of the defining questions of our time and answering it will be a key enabler that will move these next generation machines from isolated pilot programs to real, scalable adoption.”
The companies said FORT’s Trust Layer is a foundational safety infrastructure for the next generation of physical AI, that enables autonomous machines from different manufacturers to operate safely alongside humans and within shared environments. The Trust Layer platform is intentionally machine-and application-agnostic, designed to serve as a universal layer of trust across mixed-machine workspaces.
“Newbury Street II is proud to partner with FORT, a category-defining platform addressing one of the world’s most complex infrastructure challenges,” Thomas Bushey, CEO of Newbury Street II, said. “The robotics revolution is at an inflection point, and we believe FORT’s universal layer of trust can accelerate widespread adoption. We look forward to supporting Samuel and the team as they advance FORT’s horizontal platform for physical AI — as a public company, we believe FORT is well positioned to extend its leadership and create long-term shareholder value.”