Amazon to buy iRobot, maker of Roomba vacuums, for $1.7B

Amazon plans to buy iRobot, maker of the iconic Roomba robotic vacuum and other products, for $1.7 billion in cash.

The two companies announced early Friday they had entered a merger agreement leading to the acquisition.  Amazon will buy iRobot for $61 a share.

Amazon engineers are expected to work with the iRobot team.   “I’m excited to work with the iRobot team to invent in ways that make customers’ lives easier and more enjoyable,” said Dave Limp, senior vice president of Amazon Devices, in a statement.

The Roomba was first introduced in 2002.  Colin Angle, CEO of iRobot, said the company has been on a mission to create “innovative, practical products that make customers’ lives easier…Amazon shares our passion for building thoughtful innovations that empower people to do more at home. I cannot think of a better place for our team to continue our mission.”  Angle will remain CEO of iRobot under the deal.

The iRobot portfolio goes beyond Roomba to include other cleaning products and mapping and navigation.  The company was founded in 1990 by MIT artificial lab scientists Angle, Rodney Brooks and Helen Greiner.

Amazon makes various consumer products including Alexa and Echo, Kindle and Fire tablets. Its Amazon Robotics division focuses on warehouse and fulfillment services after it acquired Kiva Systems 10 years ago. The division also launched Astro, a home robot.

While cars acting as robots have taken much of the attention for robotics, iRobot has instead depicted the smart home space as a rich market for robotics.  “The home of the future is a robot,” Angle told TechCrunch. “Vacuum cleaners and the other devices are hands and eyes and appendages of the home robot…We need a home that programs itself.”

Earlier, iRobot was involved in military contracts, a business spun off in 2016 shortly after it spun out Ava, a telepresence robotics startup.   The latest Roomba has been trained to detect 80 objects through sensors as it maneuvers and vacuums a space.

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