iRobot
iRobot has announced the successor to longtime CEO, Colin Angle. Gary Cohen, who previous held chief executive role at Timex and Qualitor Automotive, will be heading up the company, marking a major…
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Amazon’s $1.4B iRobot deal is dead. Now what?
A year and a half after announcing its intention to acquire iRobot, Amazon’s deal is officially dead. All parties involved anticipated some level of regulatory scrutiny, but after a few decades of tech company consolidation, few expected this much friction. The deal had already passed through select international regulatory bodies,…
Amazon has ended its bid to acquire iRobot, the maker of robotic vacuums, after running up against headwinds with European regulators. Amazon and iRobot have opted to mutually terminate their…
It’s been 17 months since Amazon agreed to buy iRobot for $1.7 billion. The subsequent year and a half has unfolded at a glacial pace, as the deal has inched…
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Should auld acquaintance be robot
This is always a strange week for us. Save for the occasional disastrous patent dispute, things are (thankfully) almost uncannily quiet in the week separating Christmas and New Year’s Day. You see a lot of reflective posts go up during this time, not only because the calendar year is coming to…
European Union regulators have sent Amazon a formal statement of objections setting out competition concerns over its proposed acquisition of robot vacuum maker, iRobot. The step does not confirm the…
Like many of us, iRobot has a long-standing love-hate relationship with the mop. The first Scooba system became widely available in 2010. Ultimately, however, mopping up and filling a tank…
Amazon is lowering its acquisition price for robotic vacuum-maker iRobot, after the duo have hit regulatory snags trying to get the deal over the line. The e-commerce giant announced plans…
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Life after logistics
You’ll have to forgive me, as this is going to be one of those in-between Actuator weeks. I finally took a couple of days off last week after working through the last few weekends, and today I’ve been rewarded with a throbbing migraine. Isn’t the human body magical? Either way,…
The U.K.’s antitrust regulator has given the go-ahead to Amazon’s proposed billion-dollar iRobot acquisition, concluding that the deal “would not lead to competition concerns in the U.K.” Amazon first revealed…
The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has confirmed that it’s assessing Amazon’s billion-dollar bid for robot vacuum maker iRobot. The case is still at its earliest possible stage, where the…
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Robot or fauxbot?
This is my week of debriefs. CES has a way of hurling you into the new year, kicking and screaming, and it can be hard to find your bearings as you emerge on the other side. As the dust has cleared, one thing remains very clear: No two people have…
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It’s a sprint, not a marathon
Here’s a question for you: How seriously should we take Amazon’s home robotics play? Perhaps a better way of framing it is: When do we take Amazon’s home robotics play seriously? I realize these sound like pointed questions, and I should specify that they’re not really specific to Amazon. They’re…
A new letter penned by Senate and House Democrats accuses Amazon of “anticompetitive” practices in its bid to purchase Roomba-maker, iRobot, for $1.7 billion. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is leading…
IRobot makes robots that vacuum. IRobot makes robots that mop. Other companies make robots that vacuum and mop. So, why doesn’t iRobot? If you had asked the company that question…
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Please don’t tip the robot
Greetings from Cupertino, California, where the temperature has cooled down to a far more reasonable 101 degrees. It’s a nice change from the 109 degrees we hit here on Tuesday. I’m out here this week for the big Apple event. There was no robotics news to speak of, but that’s…
Amazon is buying Cloostermans, a mechatronics specialist in Belgium, to ramp up its robotics operations
Amazon has made a string of startup acquisitions over the years to build out its robotics business; now, the e-commerce leviathan is taking an interesting turn in that strategy as…
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Amazon-owned MGM makes a viral video show with surveillance footage from Amazon-owned Ring
MGM (which is owned by Amazon) is making a viral video show based on footage from Ring security cameras (also owned by Amazon). The syndicated television show, “Ring Nation,” is…
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A newsletter that’s mostly about Amazon and iRobot
Shortly after the Amazon/iRobot news was announced on Friday morning, a colleague asked me if I was surprised. The short answer is yes and no. Yes, in the sense that the news dropped suddenly on what should have been a quiet Friday morning in August. No, in the sense that,…
You’d be forgiven for missing this bit of news. I fully cop to not seeing it myself amid the buzz of last week’s Amazon acquisition news on Friday (knowing nod…
This week on The TechCrunch Podcast we’re talking to Natasha Mascarenhas about YC’s decision to shrink their startup cohort and the recent layoffs at On Deck. Then we’re joined by…
Hello again! Welcome back to Week in Review, the newsletter where we quickly recap the top stories to cross TechCrunch dot-com over the past seven days. Want it in your…
Hello, friends, and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.
Amazon this morning announced plans to acquire iRobot for an all-cash deal valued at $1.7 billion. The home robotics firm, best known for pioneering the robotic vacuum, was founded in…
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Here’s everything you missed at TC Sessions: Robotics 2022
In case you missed it, robots took over TechCrunch on Thursday, July 21. We played host to the robotic industry’s leading startups, researchers and academics at TC Sessions: Robotics. The event was a blockbuster success, and we hope you enjoyed the show. All the features, panels, interviews and podcasts are…
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Harmonizing human-robot interactions for a ‘new and weird’ world of work
Robots have always found it a challenge to work with people and vice versa. Two people on the cutting edge of improving that relationship joined us for TC Sessions: Robotics to talk about the present and future of human-robot interaction: Veo Robotics co-founder Clara Vu and Robust.ai founder Rod Brooks…
Rodney Brooks and Clara Vu will discuss human-robot interaction at TC Sessions: Robotics 2022
Robots have transformed automation across industries such as agtech, automotive, logistics, manufacturing and warehousing. Yet even the most advanced robots typically work in restricted workcells away from people due to…
After a year away, TC Sessions: Robotics returns July 22. We’ve spent the last several in-person shows at UC Berkeley, and we’re excited to be returning to Boston, where everything…
It’s time to gather your robots and get ready for a high-tech show-and-tell at TC Sessions: Robotics 2022 on July 22 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, Massachusetts. Join…
