Merista is a physical AI company building operated robotic portioning cells for chilled prepared-meal production lines in medium to large food factories.[1][3] Its system is designed as a portioning robot that fits into the footprint of a single worker station on existing lines, where the robot picks up ingredients, deposits them toward a target weight, and places them onto trays or bowls moving through the process.[1] The solution integrates perception and weight sensing for each portion, uses a food-safe robotic arm for ingredient manipulation, performs inline quality assurance checks before trays move to the next station, and logs every portion and check for traceability and analytics.[1] Merista targets cycle times under six seconds per task (subject to ingredient and line validation), aims for around 97% useful uptime after deployment maturity with defined exclusions, and is designed to beat manual baselines in portion accuracy to improve consistency and yield.[1] Its intended commercial model is a flat per-robot monthly subscription that bundles hardware, software, monitoring, and support, positioning the company as an ongoing automation service provider rather than a pure equipment seller.[1] Overall, Merista focuses on automating hard‑to‑fill, repetitive stations in food factories, refining its product while expanding into new markets.[3]
