Amazon Quietly Brings Fauna, a Friendly Robot Startup, Into the Fold

Amazon has just completed the acquisition of Fauna Robotics, the New York based startup that has been quietly developing a compact household humanoid called Sprout. The team of around 50 is folding into Amazon’s Personal Robotics Group, though Fauna will continue to operate under its own name as an Amazon company, though financial terms were not disclosed.

Fauna Robotics was founded in 2024 by a small group of engineers from Meta and Google alongside Rob Cochran, with Josh Merel joining as a co-founder. The company raised at least $30 million from backers including Kleiner Perkins, Quiet Capital, and Lux Capital, and its ambition was clear from the beginning: to build robots that people actually want to have around them.

Sprout is a compact and surprisingly personable little machine, standing just 3.5 feet tall and weighing 50 pounds. It walks on two legs, can pick up small objects, and is capable of getting itself up from a seated position to move around the room. Early footage shows it pulling off the Twist and the Floss with surprising fluency, which tells you something about the kind of robot Fauna had in mind. At $50,000 it is not built for heavy industrial work, but rather for the everyday household tasks that nobody particularly enjoys, picking up toys, grabbing groceries from the pantry, that sort of thing.

Part of what makes Sprout so interesting is how accessible it is on the software side, making it a practical platform for testing ideas in real world environments rather than controlled factory settings. That openness has attracted researchers and labs interested in how robots might fit into everyday life, whether that is a family home or a student dorm. And unlike the large warehouse dwelling humanoids that dominate the industry right now, Sprout is small enough to feel genuinely approachable in ordinary situations.”

Amazon already has a significant robot presence in their warehouses, with over a million of them in operation. They purchased Kiva Systems in 2012 and transformed it into the foundation of their modern fulfillment centers. On the consumer side, a few years ago, they debuted Astro, a rolling house robot that may not have taken off. They just acquired Rivr, a Swiss company working on four-legged delivery assistants. Amazon is increasingly focusing on robotics outside of the warehouse.
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