- General
- November 2, 2020
- 5 minutes read
Ocado Buys Kindred Systems
“File:Ocado warehouse bots.jpg” by Techwords is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 Ocado, the British online grocery retailer, has announced that it’s acquired Kindred…
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| “File:Ocado warehouse bots.jpg” by Techwords is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Ocado, the British online grocery retailer, has announced that it’s acquired Kindred Systems, a San Francisco-based startup that builds robots used to pick and pack online orders. Ocado is coughing up $262 million in cash for Kindred, which was founded in 2014 and has raised $80 million in outside funding as a private standalone company.
Among investors in Kindred who are beneficiaries of its acquisition include big names like Chinese tech giant Tencent and venture capital firms DCVC and First Round Capital.
Ocado is a major online grocer in the UK that operates no stores and only runs home deliveries from its warehouses. Much of the company’s warehousing work is automated with software and robots and will apparently be even more so thanks to Kindred’s acquisition.
It’s such that Ocado has seen a big surge in sales as the coronavirus pandemic has widely driven up the demand for online grocery purchases. The company now seems to be looking towards more automation to keep up with increased demand, signaled by its acquisition of Kindred.
Along with Kindred, Ocado has also acquired another company; Haddington Dynamics, which designs robotic manipulation and control systems. The British online grocer is coughing up $25 million in cash and stock for Haddington.
With Kindred, Ocado is getting 90 new employees, half of whom are engineers that’ll join its existing technology team upon completion of the acquisition. Kindred is expected to contribute $35 million to Ocado’s annual revenue next year.
