amazon has confirmed that will buy iRobotthe maker of the popular Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners, for 1,700 million of dollars, amount that will pay in cash, by paying $61 for each of his shares. For now, Amazon has not revealed the integration plans for the company in its structure, although it has been confirmed that the current iRobot CEO Colin Anglewill continue in his position. Amazon already has a robotics team, based in California, and offers various products for the home.
The iRobot company was born in 1990 by a group of members of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory: its current CEO Colin Angle, Rodney Brooks and Helen Greiner. Twelve years later they presented the roomba, so popular that it is the name with which any robot vacuum cleaner for the home is generically identified. iRobot is therefore one of the pioneering companies in the home robot sector. Currently, of its founders, only Angle is in the company. Roomba has been compatible with Alexa since 2017.
Angle has pointed out about the operation that since they founded iRobot, his team «has had a mission to create practical and innovative products that make life easier for customers, achieving inventions such as the Roomba and iRobot OS. Amazon shares our passion for developing innovations that empower people to do more at home, and I can’t imagine a better place for our team to continue their mission.«.
For its part, Dave Limp, Vice President of Amazon Deviceshas remembered that «We know that saving time matters, and housework takes up precious time that customers can spend doing something they love. Over the years, the iRobot team has proven its ability to reinvent how people clean with products that are incredibly practical and ingenious, from cleaning when and where customers want to, avoiding common household obstacles, to emptying automatic container that collects dirt«.
