Amazon buys iRobot for $1.7 billion

Amazon announced this morning that it intends to acquire iRobot for an all-cash transaction valued at $1.7 billion. The home robotics company, best known for pioneering the robotic vacuum cleaner, was founded in 1990 by Colin Angle, Rodney Brooks and Helen Greiner, members of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. Twelve years after its founding, the company launched the Roomba, a brand that has since become synonymous with branding, selling over 30 million units in 2020.

Brooks and Greiner went on to found and lead several other companies, while Angle remained on board as CEO, a position he will retain after the acquisition.

"Since we launched iRobot, our team has been on a mission to create innovative and practical products that make life easier for customers, leading to inventions such as the Roomba and the iRobot operating system", CEO Colin Angle said in a statement. “Amazon shares our passion for creating thoughtful innovations that empower people to do more at home, and I can't think of a better place for our team to pursue our mission. I'm extremely excited to be part of Amazon and see what we can build together for customers in the years to come."

Amazon has also aggressively moved into the robotics space in the decade since its acquisition of Kiva Systems, although the Amazon Robotics division is solely focused on its warehouse/fulfillment. More recently, the company has taken small steps into the home with the launch of Astro, a happy-go-lucky robot that doesn't have the Roomba's sole purpose.

iRobot CEO Colin Angle, Image Credits: (Photo by Paul Marotta/Getty Images for TechCrunch)

"We know saving time is important, and household chores take up valuable time that can be better spent doing something customers love," Dave Limp, SVP of Amazon Devices, said in the release. . "For many years, the iRobot team has proven its ability to reinvent the way people clean with incredibly convenient and inventive products, cleaning when and where customers want it while avoiding common obstacles around the home. , to automatic collection bin emptying. Customers love iRobot products and I'm excited to work with the iRobot team to invent ways that make customers' lives easier and more enjoyable."

Amazon and iRobot have forged an increasingly close partnership over the past few years, thanks to Roomba's adoption of Alexa functionality and use of AWS servers. Angle, too, has often talked about Roomba — and home robots in general — as a kind of connective tissue for the smart home. "The house of the future is a robot," he noted in an interview with TechCrunch. “And vacuum cleaners and other devices are the hands, eyes and appendages of the domestic robot. Ultimately, this smart home of the future is not controlled by your mobile phone. If you have 200 devices, you're not going to turn them on by pulling out your cell phone. We need a house that programs itself, and you just live in your house, and the house does the right thing based on the understanding of what's going on."

The company has struggled to recapture the success of the Roomba, however, but not for lack of trying. He has experimented with several different home robot services, from cleaning gutters and swimming pools to mopping floors and mowing the lawn. The latter arrived in the form of Terra, which was put on hold indefinitely during the pandemic. This news came in April 2020, alongside news that the company had laid off 70 employees, roughly 5% of its global workforce.