Amazon Acquires Robot-Coordinated Order Fulfillment Company Kiva Systems For $775 Million In Cash

Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... ? Learn More

Amazon has just announced that it will acquire order fulfillment company Kiva Systems for $775 million in cash. We’ve embedded the release below.
Kiva Systems’ interconnected hardware and software package is designed to streamline the process of picking, packing and shipping e-commerce products for delivery. The company uses hundreds of autonomous mobile robots and a sophisticated control software, to provide a fulfillment system for retailers.
Utilizing this system, robots scurry about the floor locating individual items before transporting them to workers who pack and ship. As founder Mick Mountz told us recently, Kiva accounts for “two-to-four times as many orders per hour as they have done the old way”. The company has been growing at over 100% a year. And the average price per system? $5 million.
“Amazon has long used automation in its fulfillment centers, and Kiva’s technology is another way to improve productivity by bringing the products directly to employees to pick, pack and stow,” said Amazon’s VP of global customer fulfillment Dave Clark in a release. “Kiva shares our passion for invention, and we look forward to supporting their continued growth.”
So, it looks like Amazon will be adding Kiva’s Robot coordinated system to its own fulfillment operations. Amazon has its own booming fulfillment operations, which the company and third-party merchants utilize to store inventory and fulfill orders. Amazon has been ramping up the development of its fulfillment centers over the past year, opening 15 new centers in 2011 worldwide. As of last July, Amazon had roughly 65 centers worldwide. And this year, the company opened new centers in India and South Carolina and has plans for a massive center in Delaware.
Kiva Systems is backed by Bain Capital Ventures.
SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Kiva Systems, Inc., a leading innovator of material handling technology.
“Amazon has long used automation in its fulfillment centers, and Kiva’s technology is another way to improve productivity by bringing the products directly to employees to pick, pack and stow,” said Dave Clark, vice president, global customer fulfillment, Amazon.com. “Kiva shares our passion for invention, and we look forward to supporting their continued growth.”
“For the past ten years, the Kiva team has been focused on creating innovative material handling technologies,” said Mick Mountz, CEO and founder of Kiva Systems. “I’m delighted that Amazon is supporting our growth so that we can provide even more valuable solutions in the coming years.”
Following the acquisition, Kiva Systems’ headquarters will remain in North Reading, Massachusetts.
Under the terms of the agreement, which has been approved by Kiva’s stockholders, Amazon will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Kiva for approximately $775 million in cash, as adjusted for the assumption of options and other items. Subject to various closing conditions, the acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of 2012.

Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN), is a leading global Internet company and one of the most trafficked Internet retail destinations worldwide. Amazon is one of the first companies to sell products deep into the long tail by housing them in numerous warehouses and distributing products from many partner companies. Amazon directly sells or acts as a platform for the sale of a broad range of products. These include books, music, videos, consumer electronics, clothing and household products. The majority of Amazon’s...
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Kiva Systems (nee Distrobot Systems) makes an order fulfillment system based around short, orange robots. Inventory is kept on racks which are picked up and moved by the robots.
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Apple Quantifies Their iPad “Record Weekend”: 3 Million Sold In 3 Days

MG Siegler is a general partner at CrunchFund and a columnist for TechCrunch, where he has been writing since 2009. His focus is on Apple. Prior to TechCrunch, MG covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He’s previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in... ? Learn More

Earlier today, AT&T announced record sales and activation numbers for the new iPad. During the Apple dividend/buyback call, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke of a “record weekend” for the new iPad. Unfortunately, neither had actual numbers to share. And that was odd since normally when Apple has a new record number to crow about, crow they do. This was more of an Amazon maneuver where “records” are set by products selling 4x of another unstated number.
Turns out Tim Cook just didn’t want to spoil the surprise. Apple has just issued a release with their actual sales numbers for the first weekend of the new iPad. And the numbers are big. Very big. Three million iPads sold in the first three days big.
So how does that stack up to the previous versions of the iPad? Well, Apple didn’t officially announce first weekend sales for the iPad 2, likely because they were very constrained. Analyst estimates pegged the number sold somewhere between 500,000 to somewhere just north of 1 million. So even using the bullish numbers, this iPad launch was roughly 3x as large as the launch last year.
Two years ago, Apple sold 300,000 iPads on the first day of sales. Again, the pace here seems to be about 3x that. For comparisons sake, Apple sold 4 million units of the iPhone 4S in its first weekend late last year.
Our full review of the new iPad.
Over the weekend, a few analysts were jumping over one another to be the first to predict timid sales of the new iPad. Those analysts, once again, now look like huge assclowns.
The quote part of the release below:

“The new iPad is a blockbuster with three million sold?the strongest iPad launch yet,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Customers are loving the incredible new features of iPad, including the stunning Retina display, and we can’t wait to get it into the hands of even more customers around the world this Friday.”

IPO: March 20, 1980, NASDAQ:AAPL
Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. in January 2007. Among the key offerings from Apple’s product line are: Pro line laptops (MacBook Pro) and desktops (Mac Pro), consumer line laptops (MacBook) and desktops (iMac), servers (Xserve), Apple TV, the Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server operating systems, the iPod (offered with...
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