Amazon buys Fauna Robotics
Amazon acquired Fauna Robotics, maker of the $50k 'Sprout' bipedal humanoid, underscoring a push toward approachable, embodied robots and signaling more investment in real‑world human‑robot interaction. The deal suggests major cloud and logistics players are betting on physical AI as the next frontier beyond purely software agents. (cnbc.com)
Financial terms of the Fauna deal were not disclosed, and the startup’s roughly 50 employees — including co‑founders Rob Cochran and Josh Merel — will join Amazon as part of the transaction. (therobotreport.com(therobotreport.com)) Sources say the acquisition closed last week and Fauna will be referred to going forward as “Fauna, an Amazon company” while continuing some external deployments. (bloomberg.com(bloomberg.com)) Fauna’s Sprout platform lists 29 degrees of freedom, a 107 cm (42‑inch) height and a 22.7 kg (50 lb) mass, with six‑degree‑of‑freedom arms and five‑degree‑of‑freedom compliant legs on its public spec sheet. (faunarobotics.com(faunarobotics.com)) The company’s hardware stack for Sprout includes an NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin (64GB) and a swappable battery rated for roughly 3–3.5 hours of runtime in the Creator Edition configuration. (faunarobotics.com(faunarobotics.com)) Fauna began shipping Sprout to select research and development partners in January and has publicly positioned the machine as a developer platform for human‑robot interaction rather than a finished consumer appliance. (techcrunch.com(techcrunch.com)) Public filings, reporting and Fauna’s own disclosures indicate the startup had raised at least $30 million from backers that include Kleiner Perkins, Quiet Capital and Lux Capital prior to the acquisition. (humanoidsdaily.com(humanoidsdaily.com)) Fauna published a technical report on Sprout (arXiv, Jan. 26, 2026) that details its safety‑first design choices — compliant control, soft exteriors, whole‑body control and teleoperation tools — aimed at deployment in shared human spaces. (arxiv.org(arxiv.org)) Amazon confirmed it recently acquired Rivr as well, making the Fauna purchase the second robotics buy this month and placing Fauna inside Amazon’s Personal Robotics Group with operations moving into an Amazon facility in New York. (cnbc.com(cnbc.com))
