Amazon to Buy iRobot for $1.7bn

Amazon announced plans to buy iRobot for an all-cash deal valued at $1.65 billion. The home robotics firm is best known for pioneering the robotic vacuum and sells more than 30 million units as of 2020.

iRobot that is best known for pioneering the robotic vacuum was founded in 1990 by MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab members Colin Angle, Rodney Brooks and Helen Greiner. Twelve years later, the company introduced the Roomba, a brand that has since become synonymous with the category.

Amazon shares our passion for building thoughtful innovations that empower people to do more at home, and I cannot think of a better place for our team to continue our mission,

says Colin Angle, CEO of iRobot. He will remain in his position after the acquisition.

In the recent years, Amazon has been aggressively expanding into the robotics industry. Ten years ago it acquired Kiva Systems, which became part of Amazon Robotics division. More recently, the company has made small steps into the home with the launch of Astro, a household robot for home monitoring.

Amazon and iRobot have had an increasingly close partnership over the past several years, through Roomba’s embrace of Alexa functionality and use of AWS servers, while Angle has often spoken about Roomba as a kind of connective tissue for the smart home saying that the home of the future "is a robot.”