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Zebra Technologies has provided retailers, manufacturers, and other businesses with mobile enterprise technology since 1969, but a major acquisition will allow the Lincolnshire, Illinois, company to offer distributors an entirely new level of automation.
Zebra — largely known for its offerings of barcode scanners, mobile computers, and printers — announced July 1 that it plans to spend $290 million to acquire Fetch Robotics, a warehouse technologies startup that Zebra currently owns a 5% stake in.
Based in San Jose, California, Fetch quickly rose to prominence after its 2014 founding with autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) engineered to pick and retrieve orders in aisles of warehouses. Fetch claims to have the biggest range of AMRs in the logistics technology industry and also offers a cloud-based development toolkit, Workflow Builder, that appeals to distributors looking to automate their workflows without the need for third-party resources.
“Our goal is to give robots and people the opportunity to do their very best work,” Bill Burns, Zebra’s chief product & solutions officer, said in a news release. “This acquisition is a continuation of what we expect to be a series of innovations that reflect our commitment to creating solutions that help our customers improve their operations through robotics.”
The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of this year.
Zebra, which has approximately 8,800 employees, had 2020 full-year sales of $4.4 billion and net profit of $504 million.
Image Credit: Zebra Technologies
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