Masayoshi Son
Alessandro Di Ciommo | NurPhoto | Getty Images
LONDON – Japanese technology conglomerate SoftBank acquired 40% of Norwegian warehouse automation company AutoStore for $ 2.8 billion.
The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Monday and later confirmed by AutoStore in an update on its website.
The deal values AutoStore, which was incorporated in 1996, at $ 7.7 billion.
SoftBank, which has made a series of investments in e-commerce and robotics in recent years, is buying a stake in American private equity group Thomas H Lee Partners and Swedish venture capital firm EQT.
“We see AutoStore as a fundamental technology that enables fast and economical logistics for companies worldwide,” said SoftBank CEO and founder Masayoshi Son in a statement.
He added: “We look forward to working with AutoStore to aggressively expand into end markets and geographies.”
Founded by Ingvar Hognaland and based in a village near Bergen called Nedre Vats, AutoStore has developed what it calls “cube storage automation”, which allows robots to maximize storage space in warehouses.
She says she has deployed 20,000 of her robots at 600 locations in 35 countries and that her technology allows customers to store four times the stock in the same space or all existing stock in 25% of the space. AutoStore’s customers include companies such as electronics retailer Best Buy, Swedish telco Siemens and British supermarket chain Asda.
Karl Johan Lier, president and CEO of AutoStore, said in a statement that SoftBank’s support will help it grow in the Asia-Pacific region.
Investing in the future
SoftBank’s son believes that machines will outsmart humans in the next 30 years.
Through the SoftBank Vision Fund, the billionaire injected large amounts of capital into companies like Arm, Improbable and Brain Corp as part of an effort to ensure that SoftBank has a financial stake in companies that are working on next generation technologies.
SoftBank also took stock of several logistics companies that can improve supply chains for e-commerce giants like Alibaba, in which SoftBank also has a stake.
For example, SoftBank supported the American warehouse robotics group Berkshire Gray in 2019. The logistics automation systems provider announced in February that it would go public through a merger with the blank check company Revolution Acceleration Acquisition Corp in a business that values the combined company at $ 2.7 billion.
Nathan Benaich, a venture capital investor with a focus on artificial intelligence, told CNBC that the pandemic was clearly a “gift” for logistics and deposit-taking companies, as they are the “backbone of online commerce”.
“AutoStore, among peers like Berkshire Gray, Ocado Robotics and 6 River Systems, are successful stores for almost 10-20 years ‘overnight’ in robotics,” he said. “They have quietly developed their deposit capabilities and footprints over that time and are now aggressively capturing the growing demand from today’s customers.”