Amazon has confirmed it acquired Fauna Robotics, a startup that builds “approachable” humanoid robots, according to reports. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
“We are excited about Fauna’s vision to build capable, safe, and fun robots for everyone,” an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC in a statement. “Together with Amazon’s robotics expertise and decades of experience earning customer trust in the home through our retail and devices businesses, we’re looking forward to inventing new ways to make our customers’ lives better and easier.”
According to TechCrunch, Fauna is a two-year-old startup founded by former Meta and Google engineers who are developing kid-size humanoid robots for the home. The acquisition was first reported by Bloomberg. Fauna’s employees, including its two founders, will join Amazon in New York City.
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Fauna Co-Founder and CEO Rob Cochran said in a LinkedIn post that he was “incredibly excited” for Fauna to join Amazon. “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.”
Fauna began shipping its first product, a 59-pound bipedal robot called Sprout, earlier this year to select research and development partners. Sprout is 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. The company said that it signed Disney and Hyundai’s Boston Dynamics as early customers.
Amazon has been invested in robotics for more than a decade. It acquired Kiva Systems for $775 million in 2012, which served as the foundation for Amazon Robotics, its division focused on warehouse automation. Earlier this month, this robotics division saw a fresh round of layoffs, which impacted at least 100 white-collar positions.
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Amazon had also acquired Rivr, a Zurich-based autonomous robotics startup known for its stair-climbing delivery robot earlier this month. Terms of this deal weren’t disclosed either.
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. The company has also experimented with robotics before, having launched a squat, roving personal robot called Astro in 2021, which is priced at $1,600. This device can only be purchased via invitation.
Amazon is entering the increasingly crowded humanoid robot market, with its acquisition of Fauna. Meanwhile Tesla is developing a humanoid robot, called Optimus, and plans to manufacture these at its Fremont, California, factory. Other competitors include California-based 1X, Figure AI, Apptronik, Agility Robotics and China-based Unitree.