Amazon acquiring Kiva Systems for $775 million

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/amazon-acquiring-kiva-systems-for-775-million/71976

by LiveTheDream • 14 years ago

151 42 14 years ago

candre717• 14 years ago

Kiva is a great company. They have been innovating since day 1, tapping into various industries. Last year, they put their robots on the floors of Boston Scientific's fulfillment center - a first for them in the highly-sensitive, highly-regulated medical arena. And, to be bought in CASH... I hope employees and the founding team made out well.

sriramk• 14 years ago

Also a great exit for Bain Capital.

portman• 14 years ago

Bain Capital Ventures. Venture Capital, not Private Equity.

beambot2• 14 years ago

As I wrote on Hizook [1]... this acquisition is great news for robotics, but it kinda makes me sad. I would have liked to see Kiva go public. Plus, I certainly hope Amazon doesn't hoard Kiva away for itself and rob the world of efficient, robotic warehouses...

[1] http://www.hizook.com/blog/2012/03/19/breaking-news-amazon-a...

iandanforth3• 14 years ago

It's a great time to start a robotics company and I hope this exit will further accelerate the pace of new companies being created! Kiva is also a great example of nailing a single high-value problem even if it's not the sexiest challenge.

swah• 14 years ago

Unfortunately you can't start a robotics startup with almost no money (like sw startups) !

colinsidoti2• 14 years ago

Kiva Systems was started with almost no money...

It's actually one of the better stories I've heard. The founder basically found various phds that were researching in related fields and convinced them to work for equity.

Maven9112• 14 years ago

Yup agreed, though I would like to know what the parent commenter experiences have been, since it seems hes involved with some robotics/AI research.

I previously posted the following about when will the robotic revolution will occur, to which I got some pretty good answers: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3630139

iandanforth3• 14 years ago

Options exist!

http://haxlr8r.com/

http://www.lemnoslabs.com/

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/peterseid/romo-the-smart...

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/147564168/bilibot-an-aff...

shingen• 14 years ago

Maybe it's just me, but watching all those robots move with purpose across the inventory floors is pretty damn sexy. lol

samsol• 14 years ago

One interesting question is what will happen to the current clients of Kiva (of which many are competing with Amazon in ecommerce market) newegg. etc ??

mc32• 14 years ago

Good question. I hope they keep innovating and serving all clients rather than it being a competitive advantage move for Amazon itself as an in-house robotics developer.

siong1987• 14 years ago

I think they will be getting the same service from Kiva.

Netflix is one of the biggest user of EWS, yet, Amazon is pushing hard on their streaming service too.

ippisl• 14 years ago

If amazon wouldn't have offered EWS to netflix or have stopped offering it to netflix, netflix could have easily use some other cloud competitor. Maybe netflix would had to pay a bit more , but i don't think it would have been a big difference.

I don't know much about kiva but if their service is hard to replace and is a unique competitive advantage(and looking at the purchase price,it seems so), amazon would use this advantage.Amazon is known to play hardball.

burgerbrain• 14 years ago

Weirdly, Amazon and Netflix fill different niches for me. Amazon's player is flash so it works for me in linux, so I use that when I'm on my computer. However Netflix has an application for my (non-Fire) android device, so I use that there.

I really wish they would start pushing on each other harder, so I could use only one for both...

hullibu• 14 years ago

What if Amazon were just positioning itself to do rebranded fulfillment? i.e. First Amazon equipment is sold to Target, etc. distribution centers; but you could spend more and have Amazon actually run the center; or you could have Amazon's distribution centers use your branded boxes and use their fulfillment centers.

tpsreport• 14 years ago

On both a very unrelated and totally related note, one of the co-founders of Kiva, Rafaello D'Andrea, dominated robo-soccer for five years.

hegga• 14 years ago

I would have gone for this Norwegian system: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iyVDMp2bL9c

larrys• 14 years ago

Interesting video but the system appears to only be a small parts solution. I don't think it could even handle a 20" monitor.

retroafroman• 14 years ago

That system may be in Norway, but the technology is made by a company called Swisslog, which is located in Switzerland.

Retric• 14 years ago

I wonder if preventing their competitors from using Kiva is part of the goal for this acquisition.

masonhensley• 14 years ago

Or, perhaps even better, making your competition your customer.

mediaman• 14 years ago

I agree, this is more likely given their behavior with AWS. They're happy to rent their IP and infrastructure to competitors.

xbryanx• 14 years ago

Was I the only one who thought that $775 million seemed like quite bit of cash for a non-profit micro-lendng company...oh wait, not that one.

mrbill• 14 years ago

This can also ease a lot of the criticism that Amazon is getting about slave-driving the (human) pickers in their warehouses lately.

WalterBright• 14 years ago

Until the robots unionize, of course.

cvg• 14 years ago

True. Ironically this will also result in criticism about how Amazon isn't employing enough humans.

BrainScraps• 14 years ago

I was wondering if anyone was going to draw the connection between today's news and this story from a few weeks ago: "I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3641184

hu_me• 14 years ago

This is a very smart play on part of Amazon. They have around 65 fulfillment centers and they are adding more this year.[1]

It costs around 15-20million to get a kiva system for a large fulfillment center.[2] With the number of kiva system amazon would need in those centres they surely saved a whole bag of money by buying the company instead of just systems, not to mention first dibs on future innovations.

[1]http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/19/amazon-acquires-online-fulf...

[2]http://www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-companies/2012/ki...

Amazon acquiring Kiva Systems for $775 million

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