Fauna Robotics’ Sprout humanoid robot is small, lightweight, and soft to the touch, making it safer than the average humanoid robot. | Source: Fauna Robotics
Amazon.com Inc. is acquiring the New York-based humanoid robot developer Fauna Robotics Inc., an Amazon spokesperson confirmed to The Robot Report. Fauna’s around 50 employees, including its founders Rob Cochran and Josh Merel, will join Amazon.
Fauna currently offers Sprout, a humanoid robot for research, released earlier this year. Amazon said it’s taking a “well thought-out and measured approach to truly understand the potential of personal robots.”
“We are excited about Fauna’s vision to build capable, safe, and fun robots for everyone,” an Amazon spokesperson told The Robot Report. “Together with Amazon’s robotics expertise and decades of experience earning customer trust in the home through our retail and devices businesses, we’re looking forward to inventing new ways to make our customers’ lives better and easier.”
Financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed. Moving forward, Fauna will be referred to as “Fauna, an Amazon company.” The startup will be joining Amazon’s Personal Robotics Group.
The acquisition comes less than a week after Amazon acquired RIVR, a company that develops quadruped robots for doorstep delivery.
What are Amazon’s plans for Fauna?
Sprout is a small, lightweight humanoid robot designed for research. It isn’t, however, a home robot meant to help the average person with their chores.
Fauna has marketed Sprout as a “modern platform for robotics development.” While it has built-in movement, control, and social behaviors, users must build applications on their own. Cochran told The Robot Report earlier this year that with the platform, Fauna hopes to give people the tools to start building interesting applications.
Amazon said it is “eager to learn from the creator community as they use Sprout, and Fauna will continue to seek new business as they do today.” However, it’s unclear what Amazon plans to do with Fauna moving forward. Does the company hope to turn Sprout into a commercialized home robot? Will it take learnings from Fauna robotics to create its own humanoid or household robot?
Sprout’s safety-first design, in particular, could be interesting to Amazon. Fauna designed the robot to be lightweight, have a soft exterior, and minimize pinch points. These features are uncommon in humanoid robots built for industrial purposes.
So far, Amazon hasn’t had much luck in the home robot category. The company previously released Amazon Astro, a small robot designed for home or small business security monitoring, remote care of elderly relatives, or as a virtual assistant. Since being released in 2021, however, Astro hasn’t gained much traction.
Amazon also canceled its acquisition of robotic vacuum maker iRobot in 2024 because of antitrust concerns.
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