ABB acquired Swedish startup SVIA and Harvest Automation sold off its warehouse robotics business to Nextshift Robotics to solely focus on agriculture robots. NDC Automation, a provider of automated guided vehicles got acquired by Dematic, a supply chain optimization company with a 200 year old history which in turn got acquired by a Chinese major. Auto Craft making autonomous guided carts was acquired by Eckhart, a leader in advanced industrial automation solutions. On the industrial usecases, Motive Drilling was acquired for $100M by Helmerich and Payne, a contract drilling company, Persimmon Technologies making vacuum robotics for the semiconductor industry was acquired for around $32M by the large Japanese industrial giant Sumitomo and Adept, a US supplier of industrial robots was acquired for $200M by Japanese conglomerate Omron. So how have the exits been in this category? While there were few mega acquisitions/mergers primarily Chinese players acquiring European and US robotics/automation companies (Kuka AG by Midea Group, Dematic by Kion Group and KraussMaffei Automation by ChemChina) and few others by US industry giants (Affeymetrix by ThermoFisher and Intelligrated by Honeywell), most acquisitions were in the sub $500M range.īalyo making innovative robotic solutions for material handling with autonomous forklift trucks for warehouses IPOed growing 3X in revenue and DroneShield that provides drone protection IPOed with a growing sales pipeline. Out of the 500 startups funded in 2016–17 as discussed in my previous article, 100 of them were in the Robotics and Drones space. “The world is changing, either you embrace or get disrupted” This seems to be the call to action for the traditional non-tech players! ‘Technology is eating the World’ and IoT, Analytics, Automation and AI are the enablers. Most were not mega Billion dollar deals, but small to moderate size ($30 - $500M) was the norm. While few mega-consolidations have happened, significant number of the 100 odd exits of IoT startups in 2016–2017 came primarily from the so called non-tech sector companies, including utility companies, operators, automation companies, industrial houses, insurance companies and even toy and food companies. ![]() Many startups are Me-Toos if you compare and contrast against the entire global pool, but focused on specific geographies (too early to go global). Many of these startups are getting regional traction with customers and funding from regional investors. The first big takeaway from the 500 Startup map was that IoT is a global phenomenon with no seeming concentration in any geography, unlike Silicon Valley being first, in the past.
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