According to reports, Kiva raised around $33 Million in VC funding [1]. Like I wrote before [2]:
I've been tracking venture capital (VC) funding of robotics companies for the better part of two years. Based on my (limited) data, VC funding in robotics exceeded $160 Million for 2011. This is just a rounding error compared to VC funding of Internet (web-based) companies, which hit a decade-long high of $6.9 Billion in 2011. My hope is that robotics will get more love in the next year(s), but getting VC funding for robotics is a decidedly tough nut to crack. Robotics companies have large capital requirements for robot hardware, few potential acquirers, and almost no "Google-scale" breakout success stories (ie. IPOs). I mean, c'mon... one of the best known robotics companies, iRobot, has a market cap of just $700 Million. This makes robotics a difficult sell to your typical VC firm. My hope is that this list can give others courage to pursue "swing for the fences" type projects along with a source for robotics-friendly VC firms.
So this acquisition is good news for robotics, and _exceeded_ the entire market cap of iRobot. Like I mentioned in a previous comment, I hope Amazon doesn't hoard Kiva to itself and rob the world of efficient, robotic warehouses.
I don't know the exact situation of Google's server warehouse design. But I presume that was developed in-house. Kiva already has other big customers that rely on it for their order fulfillment. Like said in this thread, making your competitors into customers is a smart move.
I've been tracking venture capital (VC) funding of robotics companies for the better part of two years. Based on my (limited) data, VC funding in robotics exceeded $160 Million for 2011. This is just a rounding error compared to VC funding of Internet (web-based) companies, which hit a decade-long high of $6.9 Billion in 2011. My hope is that robotics will get more love in the next year(s), but getting VC funding for robotics is a decidedly tough nut to crack. Robotics companies have large capital requirements for robot hardware, few potential acquirers, and almost no "Google-scale" breakout success stories (ie. IPOs). I mean, c'mon... one of the best known robotics companies, iRobot, has a market cap of just $700 Million. This makes robotics a difficult sell to your typical VC firm. My hope is that this list can give others courage to pursue "swing for the fences" type projects along with a source for robotics-friendly VC firms.
So this acquisition is good news for robotics, and _exceeded_ the entire market cap of iRobot. Like I mentioned in a previous comment, I hope Amazon doesn't hoard Kiva to itself and rob the world of efficient, robotic warehouses.
[1] http://www.hizook.com/blog/2012/03/19/breaking-news-amazon-a...
[2] http://www.hizook.com/blog/2012/03/01/venture-capital-vc-fun...