“We are excited about\u00a0Fauna’s vision to build\u00a0capable, safe, and fun robots for everyone,” an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC in a statement. “Together with Amazon’s robotics\u00a0expertise\u00a0and decades of experience earning customer trust in the home through our retail and devices businesses,\u00a0we’re\u00a0looking forward to inventing new ways to make our customers’ lives better and easier.”<\/p>\n
Bloomberg<\/a> was first to report on the acquisition. <\/p>\n Fauna Robotics was founded in 2024 by former Meta<\/a> and Google<\/a> engineers. Earlier this year, the New York-based company launched<\/a> Sprout, a $50,000 bipedal robot that’s 3 feet, 6 inches tall, weighs 50 pounds and is designed to be “approachable and human-friendly,” as well as “genuinely accessible” to software developers.<\/p>\n The company said at the time that it signed up Disney<\/a> and Hyundai’s Boston Dynamics as early customers. <\/p>\n Fauna’s roughly 50 employees will join Amazon in New York, the company said. In a LinkedIn post<\/a>, Fauna co-founder and CEO Rob Cochran said he was “incredibly excited” for Fauna to join Amazon. <\/p>\n “We are thrilled about what joining the Amazon team means for our future,” Cochran wrote. “Going forward, we will proudly operate as Fauna Robotics, an Amazon company.” <\/p>\n Amazon has spent more than a decade investing in robotics, primarily for applications in its warehouse operations. It acquired Kiva Systems<\/a> for $775 million in 2012, which served as the foundation for Amazon Robotics, its division focused on warehouse automation. <\/p>\n The company has turned to M&A again to beef up its robotics expertise. Amazon said<\/a> last week it acquired Rivr, a Swiss robotics company developing machines for “doorstep delivery.” <\/p>\n Amazon said it hopes to leverage its robotics knowledge, as well as its long history in retail and devices, to better understand the potential of personal robots to make its customers’ lives better and easier. <\/p>\n The company has experimented with home robots before. Amazon launched a squat, roving personal robot called Astro<\/a> in 2021, which is priced at $1,600, though the device can only be purchased via invitation. <\/p>\n By acquiring Fauna, Amazon is entering the increasingly crowded humanoid robot market. Tesla<\/a> is developing a humanoid robot, called Optimus<\/a>, and plans to manufacture these at its Fremont, California, factory. <\/p>\n In January, CEO Elon Musk<\/a> said the company would convert former production lines for the company’s flagship Model S and X vehicles into “an Optimus factory” with the goal of “having 1 million units a year,” made there.<\/p>\n Other humanoid competitors include California-based 1X, Figure AI<\/a>, Apptronik<\/a>, Agility Robotics<\/a> and China-based Unitree<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u2014 CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.<\/p>\n
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