-On the 6th, Amazon announced that it would acquire iRobot, which produced the artificial intelligence (AI) robot vacuum cleaner ‘Roomba’, for $1.7 billion (about 2.2 trillion won).
– Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot was $13.7 billion (about 17.8 trillion won) from Whole Foods Market, $8.45 billion (about 10 trillion won) from MGM, and $3.9 billion from One Medical (about 5 trillion won) is the 4th largest
-iRobot was founded in 1990 by Colin Angle, Rodney Brooks, and Helen Greiner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. More than 30 million units sold as of 2020
– Amazon and iRobot have maintained a close partnership over the past few years, including acceptance of Roomba’s Alexa function and use of AWS servers.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg noted that the acquisition could be subject to an antitrust review by the US Federal Trade Commission as iRobot’s robotic vacuum cleaner Roomba has a 75% share in the US market.
