Brooks and Greiner later founded and led several other companies, while Angle remained at the company as CEO — a role he will retain after the acquisition.
“Since we started iRobot, our team has been on a mission to create innovative, useful products that make our customers’ lives easier, resulting in the Roomba and iRobot operating systems, among others,” CEO Colin Angle said in a release. Invention. Amazon shares our passion for building thoughtful innovations that empower people to do more at home, and I can’t think of a better place for our team to continue our mission. I’m so excited to be Amazon part of it and see what we can offer our customers together for years to come.”
Amazon has also been aggressively tackling the robotics space in the decade following its acquisition of Kiva Systems, although the Amazon robotics division is solely focused on its warehouse/filling business. Most recently, the company took a small step into the home robotics industry with the launch of Astro.
“We know that saving time is important, and housework requires precious time that can be better spent doing the things our customers love,” said Dave Limp, senior vice president of Amazon Devices, in the release. “Over the years, the iRobot team has demonstrated its ability to reinvent the way people clean, with products that are incredibly practical and inventive – from cleaning when and where customers want, while avoiding common obstacles in the home , to self-emptying collection bins. Customers love iRobot products – I’m excited to work with the iRobot team to invent ways to make customers’ lives easier and more enjoyable.”
Through Roomba’s embrace of Alexa capabilities and use of AWS servers, Amazon and iRobot have been working more closely together over the past few years.
