Zebra Technologies Acquires Fetch Robotics and Its Array of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs)

Zebra Technologies Corporation intends to pay $290 million with cash on hand to acquire the 95% of Fetch Robotics that the company does not already own. This deal would value Fetch Robotics at 305 million U.S. dollars.

 

Zebra Technologies plans to acquire FetchRobotics. Image used courtesy of Fetch

 

About Zebra Technologies and Fetch Robotics

Fetch Robotics is an intralogistics automation company headquartered in Silicon Valley. Fetch Cloud Robotics Platform integrated cloud technology into autonomous mobile robotics (AMRs). It offers on-demand automation solutions for inventory management and material handling, including tracking and moving products in the facility.

Fetch’s AMRs are designed to help reduce the impact of workforce shortages while operating alongside workers to optimize picking and material delivery in distribution, fulfillment, and manufacturing environments. They also can be used to automate manual material movement in the facility.

 

Fetch’s AMRs for manufacturing.  Image used courtesy of Fetch

 

Zebra Technologies provides various technologies and solutions in manufacturing, logistics, public sector, retail, e-commerce, healthcare, banking, and more industries. Its products include barcode scanners, label printers, card and kiosk printers, temperature monitoring and sensing devices, and mobile computers.

The company has over 8,000 employees, more than 10,000 partners across 100 countries, and generated over 4 billion U.S. dollars in revenues in 2020. Fetch is a Zebra Ventures portfolio company. It has around 100 employees and approximately 10 million U.S. dollars annual sales in its early-rapid growth phase. 

 

The Move to Accelerate Enterprise Asset Intelligence Vision

Zebra hopes the planned acquisition of Fetch can help bring growth in intelligent industrial automation, optimize the supply chain to the point of consumption, and improve operational efficiency for customers in automated, data-powered environments.

According to Fetch, the chronic labor shortage in the manufacturing industry has been exacerbated by COVID-19. To improve resilience and flexibility, the industry is embracing lean manufacturing. It helps remove non-value-added activities and establish flows for the manufacturing process. AMRs are designed to assist the lean manufacturing implementation by removing some of the process wastes. 

 

Zebra provides various technologies. Image used courtesy of Zebra

 

In addition to AMRs, Fetch provides cloud-based enterprise software FetchCore, designed to deploy and integrate automated workflows into warehouse operations and manufacturing. Through machine learning on AMR sensor data, the software also can offer insights to facilities. 

With Fetch’s AMRs and the cloud-based robotics platform, Zebra hopes to accelerate the adoption of flexible automation. Combining Zebra’s vertical market expertise and go-to-market footprint, the two companies expect to bring innovations in robotics to help customers improve their operations.