Amazon is the biggest logistic company in the world. It has never seized to surprise me that they don't have any presence in this space. Even if things are 10 years away, you want to be in this space if you were claiming to be biggest logistic corporation.
Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox
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Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox
#22Zoox raised almost a billion so terrible exit for the investors, who basically just parked their money for several years. Zoox likely ran out of money and nobody wants to keep dumping money in this space given the anemic progress in the last couple of years. But here is an interesting take. Amazon is an formidable acquirer and probably the only big-tech that knows how to squeeze from their M&A activity. They probably…
This is clearly just cherry picking. They did NLP + Echo + Alexa in house. Cloud / servicification on their own.
> They did NLP + Echo + Alexa in house.
Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox
#23Amazon is the biggest logistic company in the world. It has never seized to surprise me that they don't have any presence in this space. Even if things are 10 years away, you want to be in this space if you were claiming to be biggest logistic corporation.
They do have some presence (large investments in Rivian and Aurora.tech).
Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox
#24Wow, so anyone without preferred shares (i.e. all employees) will get nothing in the deal.
Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox
#25I work in an office that shares space with Zoox. I've never told anyone this but I find them incredibly annoying. Whenever they take their cars out for a test drive, they sit in the middle of the road in the parking lots. If you aren't going to be driving around anytime soon, just pull into a parking spot, instead of blocking all the empty spots and making it more difficult for people to drive around you.
Culture fit with Amazon delivery drivers then ;)
Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox
#26Zoox raised almost a billion so terrible exit for the investors, who basically just parked their money for several years. Zoox likely ran out of money and nobody wants to keep dumping money in this space given the anemic progress in the last couple of years. But here is an interesting take. Amazon is an formidable acquirer and probably the only big-tech that knows how to squeeze from their M&A activity. They probably…
> Also kind of interesting that they are an opportunistic buyer (almost vulturous) that most of the times only pulls the trigger when the acquisition target is in their lows.
Unsurprising since Bezos himself worked in a Hedge fund. The Autonomous Driving hype train is slowing down, so this is the perfect opportunity for this move.
Interestingly, with this move, Bezos can soon rival Musk for the next 'billionaire super genius rock star' position.
Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox
#27Interesting. These guys are supposedly launching their ride hailing fleet this year on public roads. "unorthodox entrepreneurial zeal of Kentley-Klay, an Australian native with no prior automotive experience." was the key mover on all this and "touted Zoox’s strategy of building its own vehicles for full autonomy as wiser than the standard approach of retrofitting existing cars that Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo and others a…
Hey, he has a dash in his last name. He must be, like, really smart and sophisticated.
Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is clearly just cherry picking. They did NLP + Echo + Alexa in house. Cloud / servicification on their own.
That’s customer facing. Read my comment again. I’m talking about non-customer facing / utilitarian technology that is used to facilitate their customer facing services and products.
Annapurna is customer facing now with Graviton. Also, we don't know how much they invest after acquisition.
I think Annapurna was more strategic than you think.
* James Hamilton in 2010: https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2010/10/datacenter-network...
* Annapurna acquired in 2015.
* In 2017 they reveal that every EC2 server has a Nitro (Annapurna) chip for networking: http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-11-29/aws-ec2-virtuali...
Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox
#29This isn't a good outcome for Zoox, which raised its Series B at a $3.2B post-money valuation in July 2018. The company also raised ~$200M of debt in 2019 and nearly $1B in total funding. Meaning it's likely only investors will get paid out for this $1B exit.
Insanity, really on the wrong side of the reward curve.
Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox
#30Interesting. These guys are supposedly launching their ride hailing fleet this year on public roads. "unorthodox entrepreneurial zeal of Kentley-Klay, an Australian native with no prior automotive experience." was the key mover on all this and "touted Zoox’s strategy of building its own vehicles for full autonomy as wiser than the standard approach of retrofitting existing cars that Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo and others a…
And yet, everything you seen on the street from Zoox is a retro-fitted Toyota. I don't think their own vehicle ever made it onto the street.