Amazon today finished its $775 million purchase of Kiva Systems, the Massachusetts-based maker of automation technology for fulfillment centers — better known as warehouse robots.
The company disclosed the completion of the deal in a (very) brief regulatory filing.
Amazon had announced the acquisition agreement in March. Kiva’s customers include drugstore.com, Gilt Group, Dansko, Gap, Toys R Us, Office Depot, Walgreen’s, GAP and Staples, in addition to Amazon-owned Quidsi, the company behind Diapers.com.
In many cases, those companies compete with Amazon, but the Seattle company said previously that Kiva customers would “continue to receive service and support after the transaction.”
On the company’s earnings conference call last week, Amazon officials were mum on their plans for further integrating the Kiva, except to say that they were excited about the deal.
“We’re very, very excited to be having Kiva and the team as part of the Amazon team,” said Thomas Szkutak, the company’s chief financial officer, on the call. “We’re extremely excited to have that. And in terms of implementations within Amazon, we still have a lot of work to do to figure out how and when we’ll do that. And so those are things that we’ll be working on. But we’re very, very excited about the opportunity to join with Kiva. So we’re excited about it.”
