acquisitions
Amazon buys iRobot for $1.7 billion
The iRobot headquarters in Bedford. photo
© Cj Gunther/EPA/dpa
The US manufacturer iRobot is best known for its automatic vacuum cleaners from the Roomba brand. The takeover is worth a lot of money to the online retailer Amazon.
The world’s largest online retailer Amazon wants to take over the US company iRobot, known for its self-propelled Roomba vacuum cleaners. The companies announced Friday that they had agreed a purchase price of $61 per share. This means that iRobot, including its outstanding debts, is valued at around 1.7 billion dollars (1.67 billion euros). Amazon wants to pay the sum in cash. However, shareholders and regulators still have to agree.
iRobot is a consumer tech company specializing in service robots and home automation. The company was founded in 1990 by three researchers from a computer science laboratory at the top US university, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and went public on the US technology exchange Nasdaq in 2003. A year earlier, iRobot released the Roomba automatic vacuum cleaner, which also appears as a cat transporter in many viral internet videos.
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