Amazon.com acquisition history

Amazon acquired Twitch, the leading live-streaming video platform for gamers, which at the time drew more than 55 million monthly unique visitors and over a million broadcasters. Twitch continued to operate independently while benefiting from Amazon's infrastructure. The deal marked Amazon's expansion into interactive live video and gaming communities. approximately $970 million.

Broadcasting and watching gameplay is a global phenomenon and Twitch has built a platform that brings together tens of millions of people. Like Twitch, we obsess over customers and like to think differently, and we look forward to learning from them and helping them move even faster to build new services for the gaming community.Jeff Bezos — Founder and CEO, Amazon

Amazon and Twitch optimize for our customers first and are both believers in the future of gaming. Being part of Amazon will let us do even more for our community.Emmett Shear — CEO, Twitch

Amazon acquired Kiva Systems, an innovator in warehouse material-handling robotics that moves shelves of products directly to workers for picking, packing and stowing. The technology became the foundation of Amazon Robotics and reshaped fulfillment-center productivity. Kiva's headquarters remained in North Reading, Massachusetts. approximately $775 million.

Amazon has long used automation in its fulfillment centers, and Kiva's technology is another way to improve productivity by bringing the products directly to employees to pick, pack and stow. Kiva shares our passion for invention, and we look forward to supporting their continued growth.Dave Clark — VP of Global Customer Fulfillment, Amazon.com

For the past ten years, the Kiva team has been focused on creating innovative material handling technologies. I'm delighted that Amazon is supporting our growth so that we can provide even more valuable solutions in the coming years.Mick Mountz — CEO and Founder, Kiva Systems

Amazon acquired Souq.com, the largest e-commerce marketplace in the Middle East, extending Amazon's retail reach across the Gulf region. Souq was later rebranded as Amazon.ae in the UAE. The acquisition gave Amazon an established logistics network and customer base in a high-growth region. approximately $580 million.

Amazon acquired Audible, the leading online provider of premium digital spoken-word audio including audiobooks, newspapers and original programming. The deal was structured as an all-cash tender offer. Audible complemented Amazon's Kindle digital-media strategy and became its audiobook platform. approximately $300 million.

Audible.com offers the best customer experience, the widest content selection and the broadest device compatibility in the industry. Working together, we can introduce more innovations and bring this format to an even wider audience.Steve Kessel — SVP for Worldwide Digital Media, Amazon.com

This deal brings together two pioneering companies that share a long history of ceaseless focus on improving the customer experience. We are very excited to be joining a company as innovative as Amazon.com.Donald Katz — Founder and CEO, Audible.com

Amazon acquired Zoox, a company building purpose-designed autonomous ride-hailing vehicles from the ground up. Zoox continued to operate as an independent Amazon subsidiary pursuing its robotaxi vision. The deal positioned Amazon in the autonomous-mobility space.

Zoox is working to imagine, invent, and design a world-class autonomous ride-hailing experience. Like Amazon, Zoox is passionate about innovation and about its customers, and we're excited to help the talented Zoox team to bring their vision to reality in the years ahead.Jeff Wilke — CEO of Worldwide Consumer, Amazon

Amazon acquired eero, maker of mesh WiFi routers that deliver reliable, easy-to-set-up home networks. eero's technology helps connected and smart-home devices work more seamlessly, complementing Amazon's Echo and Alexa device ecosystem.

We are incredibly impressed with the eero team and how quickly they invented a WiFi solution that makes connected devices just work.Dave Limp — SVP of Amazon Devices and Services

Amazon acquired Wondery, a leading podcast creator and network behind top shows, integrating it into Amazon Music's growing podcast offering. The deal expanded Amazon's original audio content and advertising opportunities in podcasting.

Dpreview.com, founded in 1998, was the web's most comprehensive destination for digital camera reviews, specifications, sample images, forums and buying guides, drawing about seven million unique visitors monthly at the time of the deal. Amazon acquired the London-based site to add an authoritative, independent source of camera information for consumers shopping electronics.

Dpreview.com is by far the most authoritative source anywhere for straight talk about new digital cameras.Jeff Bezos — Founder and CEO, Amazon.com

Founded in 1984 and based in Grand Haven, Michigan, Brilliance Audio was the largest independent audiobooks-only publisher in the United States, producing unabridged and abridged editions of bestselling adult fiction and nonfiction for trade and library channels. Amazon acquired it to strengthen its audiobook publishing and make it more economical for authors and publishers to release titles in audio.

Brilliance Audio has been delighting customers for more than two decades with their world-class audiobook capabilities.Greg Greeley — Vice President of Books, Amazon.com

Withoutabox, operating since 2000 and based in the Los Angeles area, built online tools connecting more than 150,000 independent filmmakers with nearly 3,000 film festivals across some 200 countries, streamlining film submissions and festival management. Amazon acquired it through its IMDb subsidiary to link the filmmaker and festival community with IMDb's tens of millions of monthly visitors.

For eight years, Withoutabox has enabled filmmakers and festivals to reach the widest audience possible. Now, they will be able to connect directly with the 50 million film lovers who visit IMDb each month.David Straus — CEO, Withoutabox

Fabric.com, based in Marietta, Georgia, was a leading online store for custom-measured and cut fabrics along with patterns, sewing tools and accessories spanning apparel, quilting and home decor. Amazon acquired it to broaden its selection in the sewing, craft and hobby segment while giving Fabric.com access to Amazon's technology and fulfillment.

Over the years, we've seen a growing interest in this segment from our customers.Chris Nielsen — Vice President, Amazon.com Home & Garden store

Shelfari was a Seattle-based social network for book lovers that let readers build virtual bookshelves, rate and review titles and share recommendations. Amazon, which had earlier made a minority investment in the company, acquired it to bolster its book-focused social and community features; the team was folded into Amazon's book technology group.

Reflexive Entertainment, founded in 1997 and based in Orange County, California, was a casual-games developer and operator of the Reflexive Arcade platform for distributing PC, Mac and web games (titles included Big Kahuna Reef and the Ricochet series). Amazon acquired it primarily for its casual-game development and digital distribution technology.

Box Office Mojo, founded in 1999 and based in Los Angeles, was a widely used website tracking movie box-office grosses and related film-industry data. Amazon acquired it through its IMDb subsidiary to enhance IMDb's movie data with detailed box-office information.

Lexcycle, a Portland, Oregon startup, made Stanza, a popular e-book reading application for the iPhone, iPod touch and desktop that supported the open ePub format and had drawn millions of downloads. Amazon acquired the young company to strengthen its position in the growing e-book and mobile reading market.

SnapTell was a mobile image-recognition startup whose technology let users photograph the cover of a CD, DVD, book or video game to identify the product and pull up pricing and reviews from a database of several million items. Amazon acquired it through its A9.com search subsidiary to advance its mobile visual-search capabilities.

TeachStreet operated a Seattle-based online marketplace that connected students with local and online teachers and classes, including pricing, location and instructor background, plus business-management tools for teachers and schools. Amazon acquired the company and folded its team into AmazonLocal, its local-services and daily-deals platform, and wound down the standalone TeachStreet site shortly after.

Evi, formerly True Knowledge, was a Cambridge, UK company that built a natural-language question-answering assistant powered by a structured knowledge base and machine-reasoning technology. Amazon acquired the company and its NLP and knowledge-graph capabilities were folded into the development of its voice-assistant efforts that became Alexa.

Avalon Books was a New York publisher founded in 1950 specializing in wholesome Romance, Mystery and Western fiction. Amazon Publishing acquired publication rights to more than 3,000 backlist titles, planning to digitize the previously print-only catalog for Kindle under its Montlake Romance and Thomas & Mercer imprints while keeping print editions available.

I chose Amazon Publishing because they care deeply about the writers, readers, and categories that have long mattered to our family.Ellen Bouregy Mickelsen — Publisher, Avalon Books

UpNext was a startup that developed vector-based, native 3D maps of dozens of US cities for iOS and Android, with navigation and building-level detail. Amazon acquired the company to gain its own mapping technology, which it could integrate into the Kindle Fire tablet line rather than relying on third-party map apps.

IVONA Software is a Polish specialist in text-to-speech technology, offering natural-sounding voices across 17 languages for voice interfaces on mobile devices, computers and communication systems. Its technology already powered the Text-to-Speech, Voice Guide and Explore by Touch accessibility features on Kindle Fire, and Amazon acquired it to advance those voice and accessibility capabilities.

IVONA's exceptional text-to-speech technology leads the industry in natural voice quality, accuracy and ease of use.Dave Limp — Vice President, Amazon Kindle

Liquavista was a Netherlands-based display company, originally a Philips spin-off, developing low-power color electrowetting screens capable of brighter color and faster refresh than E Ink. Amazon acquired the business from Samsung Electronics, aiming to advance full-color, low-power display technology for its e-readers and tablets.

Amiato was a startup that built a cloud data-warehouse and 'Schema-lift' technology to automatically extract unstructured data from NoSQL databases, add structure, and continuously load it into cloud data warehouses such as Amazon Redshift. Amazon acquired the company, with most of its team joining the AWS database and Redshift product groups.

Rooftop Media was a San Francisco company that ran RooftopComedy, recording live stand-up comedy performances and licensing the content for live and on-demand streaming. Amazon's Audible unit acquired the roughly 10-person company for its comedy content and pool of comic talent to expand its digital audio library.

GoodGame was an esports agency that managed rosters of professional competitive gamers and organized live gaming tournaments. It was acquired in December 2014 by Twitch, the live game-streaming platform Amazon had agreed to buy earlier that year, to strengthen Twitch's live competitive-gaming and event capabilities.

Annapurna Labs was an Israeli semiconductor startup that had operated largely in stealth since 2011, designing high-performance, energy-efficient system-on-chip technology for networking and data-center use. Amazon acquired the company in 2015, and it became the in-house silicon team behind the AWS Nitro System and Amazon's custom Graviton, Trainium, and Inferentia processors.

2lemetry was an enterprise Internet-of-Things startup whose ThingFabric platform let organizations connect, track, and manage large fleets of IP-enabled devices and machines. Amazon acquired it in 2015, with the technology and team feeding into what became the AWS IoT services.

Shoefitr was a startup that used 3D scanning technology and a database of footwear models to recommend the right shoe size and style for online shoppers, aiming to reduce returns from ill-fitting purchases. Amazon acquired the company in 2015 to improve the fit experience for footwear sold on its retail site.

ClusterK built software that let customers run applications on AWS EC2 Spot Instances at a fraction of on-demand pricing while maintaining reliability, through products for load balancing and cloud-native HPC scheduling. Amazon acquired the company in 2015 and moved the team to its Seattle headquarters.

AppThwack operated a cloud service that let developers test mobile websites and apps across a large array of real iOS and Android devices. Amazon acquired the startup in 2015, and its technology underpinned the launch of AWS Device Farm; the standalone AppThwack service was wound down as customers transitioned to the new AWS offering.

Elemental Technologies, founded in 2006 and headquartered in Portland, Oregon, pioneered software-defined video processing that lets media and entertainment companies reformat live and on-demand video for delivery across PCs, phones, tablets, and TVs, powering services such as BBC iPlayer and HBO GO. Amazon Web Services acquired the company in 2015 to pair Elemental's video technology with AWS cloud infrastructure. The deal became the foundation of the AWS Elemental media-services business.

Together, we'll collaborate on deeper technology integrations and new infrastructure offerings so that media companies can evolve their hybrid and cloud models.Andy Jassy — Senior Vice President, Amazon Web Services

Safaba Translation Systems, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University, was an enterprise machine-translation provider whose customers included PayPal and Dell. Amazon acquired the company in 2015, using its technology and team to seed Amazon's own machine-translation research and development group.

Biba Systems built a mobile-first business communications app that combined chat, video conferencing, audio calling, and screen sharing in a single interface. Amazon acquired the startup's patents and staff in 2015 (through an entity named Justin Acquisition), and the technology is widely associated with the later development of Amazon Chime.

Orbeus was an artificial-intelligence startup whose neural-network technology automatically recognized and categorized the contents of photos, offered through an image-analysis product called ReKognition. Amazon quietly acquired the company in late 2015, hiring nearly all of its staff, and the technology is associated with the later Amazon Rekognition image and video analysis service.

Colis Privé is a French private parcel-delivery company in which Amazon had held a minority (roughly 25%) stake since 2014. Amazon announced an agreement in late 2015 to acquire the company, but terminated the planned acquisition in May 2016 for reasons it described as outside its control, retaining only its minority stake.

Amazon acquired Bookpages, one of the largest online bookstores in the United Kingdom, offering UK customers access to essentially all of the roughly 1.2 million titles in print in Britain. It was purchased together with two other international internet companies (Telebook and the Internet Movie Database) for an aggregate of approximately $55 million in cash and common stock. Bookpages became a foundation for Amazon's launch in the UK, later relaunching as Amazon.co.uk.

These acquisitions will enable Amazon.com to quickly offer European consumers the same combination of selection, service, and value that we now provide our U.S. customers.Jeff Bezos — Founder and CEO, Amazon.com

Amazon acquired Telebook, Germany's leading online bookstore, which operated through its ABC Buecherdienst subsidiary and carried a catalog of nearly 400,000 German-language titles. Telebook was one of three international internet companies bought together for an aggregate of approximately $55 million in cash and common stock. It became the basis for Amazon's German storefront, later relaunching as Amazon.de.

These acquisitions will enable Amazon.com to quickly offer European consumers the same combination of selection, service, and value that we now provide our U.S. customers.Jeff Bezos — Founder and CEO, Amazon.com

Amazon acquired the Internet Movie Database, a comprehensive online repository of movie and television information first launched in 1990. IMDb was one of three international internet companies purchased together for an aggregate of approximately $55 million in cash and common stock. IMDb continues to operate as an Amazon subsidiary and later underpinned Amazon's move into online video and entertainment.

These acquisitions will enable Amazon.com to quickly offer European consumers the same combination of selection, service, and value that we now provide our U.S. customers.Jeff Bezos — Founder and CEO, Amazon.com

Amazon acquired Junglee, a Sunnyvale-based provider of advanced Web-based virtual database technology that helped shoppers find and discover millions of products across the internet. Amazon issued approximately 9.4 million shares of common stock and assumed all outstanding options and warrants, with substantially all of the roughly $180 million purchase price allocated to goodwill and intangibles under the purchase method. Junglee's comparison-shopping technology was folded in to power product discovery on Amazon.

Junglee has assembled an extraordinary team of people. Together we'll empower customers to find and discover the products they want to buy.Jeff Bezos — Founder and CEO, Amazon.com

Amazon acquired Sage Enterprises, operator of PlanetAll, a free Web-based address book, calendar and reminder service based in Cambridge, Massachusetts with about 1.5 million members. Amazon issued roughly 4.8 million shares and assumed outstanding options; the deal was accounted for as a pooling of interests, so no separate purchase price was recorded (it was announced alongside Junglee as part of an aggregate ~$280 million in equity for the two companies). PlanetAll's contact and reminder features were used to enrich Amazon's customer experience.

Amazon acquired Convergence Corporation, a developer of technology for connecting wireless and mobile devices to the internet, in 1999 as part of its early move toward mobile commerce. Amazon assumed the Convergence Corporation stock option plan (registered on a Form S-8 incorporated by reference in Amazon's 1999 Form 10-K), and the deal fell among Amazon's smaller 1999 acquisitions for which no individual purchase price was separately disclosed. The transaction supported Amazon's exploration of mobile-commerce capabilities.

Amazon acquired Leep Technology, a developer of data-mining, customer-relationship-management and data-warehouse software, in late 1999. The deal was one of Amazon's small technology tuck-ins of the period and was not separately disclosed in Amazon's SEC filings, nor could an official Amazon announcement be located. Its technology was aimed at strengthening Amazon's customer-data and analytics capabilities.

Amazon acquired MindCorps, an early e-commerce technology company (founded 1996) that had built some of the first online stores and auction systems, in 1999. The acquisition was a small technology/talent tuck-in that was not separately disclosed in Amazon's SEC filings, and no official Amazon announcement could be located. MindCorps' team and technology reinforced Amazon's store and auction platforms.

Amazon acquired the assets of Egghead.com, a software and electronics online retailer, out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2001, winning the assets at a bankruptcy-court auction. The purchase covered the Egghead.com domain name, brand and website/customer data rather than an operating business. Secondary sources report a price of about $6.1 million, but no official Amazon announcement or SEC disclosure of the transaction could be located.

Amazon acquired OurHouse.com, a home, garden and hardware e-commerce site (originally positioned as an online partner for Ace Hardware), in 2001. The transaction was an acquisition of assets/customer data and was not separately disclosed in Amazon's SEC filings, and no official Amazon announcement could be located. Amazon later used home-improvement categories within its broader retail store.

Joyo.com operated www.joyo.com and www.joyo.com.cn, the largest online retailers of books, music and videos in China, selling books, DVDs, music, software, toys and gifts. Amazon bought the Beijing-based company to enter the fast-growing Chinese e-commerce market, making Joyo.com its seventh global website and the foundation of what later became Amazon China.

We are very pleased to be entering the Chinese market with Joyo.com. In a relatively short time, Joyo.com has established itself as the leading online destination for books, music and videos in China, and we're happy to be part of one of the world's most dynamic markets.Jeff Bezos — Founder and CEO, Amazon.com

BookSurge, based in Charleston, South Carolina, was a print-on-demand and inventory-free book printing and fulfillment company that let publishers and authors self-publish titles printed only when ordered. Amazon acquired it to build an on-demand publishing and fulfillment capability, seeding the operation that later became CreateSpace.

Print-on-demand has changed the economics of small-quantity printing, making it possible for books with low and uncertain demand to be profitably produced.Greg Greeley — Vice President of Media Products, Amazon.com

Mobipocket SA was a Paris-based maker of e-book reader software and the .mobi e-book file format, letting customers download and read books on PCs, PDAs and mobile phones. Amazon acquired the company in 2005 to build digital e-reading technology, and the Mobipocket format was later adapted into the AZW format used by the Kindle.

CustomFlix Labs was a manufacture-on-demand service that produced and distributed DVDs (and later CDs) for independent and enterprise content owners without holding inventory. Amazon acquired the company in 2005 and operated it as a wholly owned subsidiary, extending its on-demand media production alongside print-on-demand books.

Small Parts, Inc. was a supplier of small industrial and MRO components and precision parts originally serving the medical-supply and research markets. Amazon acquired the business in 2005 and used it to expand into industrial and scientific supplies, later forming the basis of AmazonSupply and Amazon Business.

Shopbop.com, based in Madison, Wisconsin, was an online retailer of fashion-forward women's apparel, shoes and accessories carrying more than 75 designer brands. Amazon acquired it in 2006 to strengthen its apparel and accessories business, running Shopbop as a stand-alone premium fashion site.

We're incredibly happy to have Shopbop.com become part of the Amazon family. We look forward to introducing their incredible brand and store to Amazon's tens of millions of customers.Russ Grandinetti — Vice President, Apparel and Accessories, Amazon.com

Touchco was a New York touchscreen technology startup whose interpolating force-sensitive resistance (IFSR) technology enabled low-cost, pressure-sensitive and potentially transparent multi-touch displays. Amazon acquired the company in 2010 and merged its team and technology into its Kindle hardware division, Lab126.

Woot, based in Carrollton, Texas, was a pioneering deal-of-the-day e-commerce site offering one heavily discounted product each day. Amazon signed an agreement in June 2010 to acquire the Woot equity it did not already own, adding a popular daily-deals brand that continued to operate independently under its existing leadership.

Amie Street was a U.S. online music retailer known for demand-based pricing, where track prices started near zero and rose as more copies sold. Amazon, which had been the lead investor in Amie Street's 2007 Series A round, acquired the remaining business in 2010, migrated its customers to Amazon MP3 and shut the standalone store down.

BuyVIP.com was a Madrid-based online fashion and lifestyle shopping club with more than six million members, running time-limited flash-sale campaigns for top brands across markets including Spain, Germany and Italy. Amazon acquired it in 2010 to expand its European retail footprint and fashion selection.

BuyVIP.com offers their members an exciting selection of top fashion and lifestyle products at extraordinarily low prices.Greg Greeley — Vice President of European Retail, Amazon

Quidsi operated Diapers.com (online baby-care specialty site), Soap.com (everyday household essentials) and the newly launched BeautyBar.com. Amazon acquired the company in 2010 to strengthen its position in baby, health and household e-commerce; Quidsi continued to operate independently under its existing leadership before Amazon later wound it down.

I'm not sure which is more unpleasant - changing diapers, paying too much for them, or running out of them. This acquisition brings together two companies who are committed to providing great prices and fast delivery to parents, making one of the chores of being a parent a little easier and less expensive.Jeff Bezos — Founder and CEO, Amazon.com

The Toby Press was an independent publisher of literary and commercial fiction and works in translation. In 2010 Amazon acquired the publication rights to roughly 121 of its titles by 61 authors, re-releasing them in print and Kindle editions through its AmazonEncore and AmazonCrossing imprints.

We're excited to expand the audience of these titles and introduce them to readers everywhere.Jeff Belle — Vice President, Amazon.com Books

LOVEFiLM was a leading European subscription entertainment service combining DVD and games rental-by-post with instant streaming of films and TV shows across the UK, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Amazon, which already held a significant minority stake, agreed in January 2011 to acquire the remaining shares, giving it a European streaming and rental platform.

LOVEFiLM has been innovating on behalf of movie rental customers across Europe for many years.Greg Greeley — Vice President of European Retail, Amazon

The Book Depository was a fast-growing UK-based online bookseller offering more than six million titles with free worldwide delivery to over 100 countries, from a fulfillment center in Gloucester, England. Amazon acquired it in 2011 to strengthen its international book retailing.

Customers in more than 100 countries enjoy The Book Depository's vast selection, convenient delivery and free shipping.Greg Greeley — Vice President of European Retail, Amazon

Pushbutton was a UK developer of applications for next-generation interactive television and connected devices, having helped launch the LOVEFiLM player across multiple platforms. Amazon acquired it in 2011 to build in-house expertise in connected-device and TV app experiences supporting LOVEFiLM and its European services.

Pushbutton has a strong reputation for delivering amazing user experiences on connected devices.Greg Greeley — Vice President of European Retail, Amazon

Yap was a U.S. speech-recognition startup offering a cloud-based speech-to-text transcription platform (Yap Speech Cloud). Amazon quietly acquired the company in 2011 by merging it into an Amazon-owned entity, gaining voice-recognition technology and talent that later fed into products such as Alexa, Echo and Fire TV.

Double Helix Games was an Irvine, California video game developer formed in 2007 from the merger of The Collective and Shiny Entertainment, known for titles including Killer Instinct and Strider. Amazon acquired the studio in early 2014 for its talent and intellectual property, folding its roughly 75 developers into the newly formed Amazon Game Studios.

NICE was an Asti, Italy software-and-services company for high-performance and technical computing, whose EnginFrame grid portal and Desktop Cloud Visualization (DCV) remote 3D technology let engineering and research teams centralize and access HPC workloads. AWS announced in February 2016 that it had signed an agreement to acquire NICE, with the products continuing under the NICE brand.

We have signed an agreement to acquire this leading provider of software and services for high performance and technical computing.Jeff Barr — AWS Chief Evangelist

Emvantage was a Noida, India online-payments startup providing a gateway to process credit-card, debit-card, mobile and prepaid-wallet transactions for merchants. Amazon acquired the company in early 2016 for an undisclosed amount, absorbing its team and payments technology into its India operations.

Cloud9 was a San Francisco- and Amsterdam-based startup offering a browser-based, collaborative integrated development environment (IDE) with roughly half a million users and customers such as Salesforce, Mozilla and Heroku. AWS acquired Cloud9 in 2016, later relaunching the technology as the AWS Cloud9 cloud developer environment integrated with services like Lambda and EC2.

Curse was a global gaming media and technology company operating 65-plus community sites (including the Gamepedia wiki) plus in-game chat, voice, video and databases reaching roughly 30 million gamers a month. It was acquired in August 2016 by Twitch, Amazon's live game-streaming subsidiary; financial terms were not disclosed.

Today we're excited to announce we've agreed to acquire a company that will help our community grow ever larger yet stay more connected than ever.Evan Freitas — Twitch

Westland was a Chennai, India trade-book publisher and distributor (imprints including Tranquebar and EastWest) and one of the country's top English-language publishers, previously owned by Tata Group's Trent Ltd. Amazon took a roughly 26% stake in early 2016 and then acquired the remaining shares later in 2016, taking full ownership of the publisher.

Partpic was an Atlanta visual-recognition startup (founded 2013 by Jewel Burks Solomon and Jason Crain) whose computer-vision technology let users identify maintenance, repair and operations parts such as fasteners by photographing them. Amazon acquired the company in late 2016 and brought its co-founder into the A9 visual-search team, later shipping the technology as Amazon's Part Finder feature.

harvest.ai was a San Diego cybersecurity startup, co-founded by former NSA staff, that used machine learning to model how users access an organization's key intellectual property and flag anomalous behavior signalling a potential data breach. AWS quietly acquired the company in early 2017; its small team relocated to Amazon's Seattle headquarters.

Thinkbox Software, founded 2010, built render-farm management and content-creation tools for media, entertainment and engineering, including the Deadline render manager plus Krakatoa, Sequoia, Draft and XMesh. AWS acquired Thinkbox in March 2017, with the products later offered as AWS Thinkbox; financial terms were not disclosed.

Do (do.com) was a productivity startup whose platform made business meetings more effective by preparing and managing notes, organizing the meetings, and generating reports for absentees. Amazon acquired the company in early 2017, shut down Do's standalone apps, and folded the team into Amazon Chime, its AWS-delivered communications service.

Graphiq (formerly FindTheBest, founded 2009) was a Santa Barbara company that built a large knowledge graph and data-visualization engine organizing structured information about products, places and people, with visualizations used by outlets such as Reuters and the Associated Press. Amazon acquired the roughly 130-person company in 2017, with most staff continuing on to work on Alexa.

GameSparks was a UK/Ireland-based backend-as-a-service platform giving game developers server-side capabilities — leaderboards, player data, matchmaking and live-ops — via APIs and a cloud coding tool. AWS acquired the company in 2017 (Amazon publicly confirmed the deal in March 2018), folding it into its cloud gaming services.

Wing.ae was a Middle East delivery-marketplace startup building a network for Prime-style same-day and next-day deliveries across markets including the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In September 2017 it was fully acquired by Souq.com, Amazon's newly acquired Middle East e-commerce subsidiary, following an earlier minority investment; terms were undisclosed.

Body Labs was a New York AI startup, with roots in Brown University and the Max Planck Institute, that used computer vision to build true-to-life 3D body models from photos and video for uses such as virtual clothing fit and photorealistic avatars. Amazon acquired the company in October 2017; financial terms were not officially disclosed.

Goo Technologies was a Swedish startup (founded 2012) whose WebGL engine let developers build hardware-accelerated 2D/3D graphics and interactive experiences that ran in the browser or as HTML5 mobile apps. After Goo filed for bankruptcy in 2017, AWS acquired its technology and used it as the foundation for Amazon Sumerian, the AR/VR and 3D authoring tool unveiled at re:Invent 2017.

Dispatch was a California robotics startup (founded 2015) that built Carry, an electric, semi-autonomous sidewalk delivery robot able to carry up to about 100 pounds. Amazon quietly acquired Dispatch's technology and talent in 2017 — Dispatch's patent transferred to Amazon Technologies in November 2017 — and used them to build the Amazon Scout delivery robot.

Amazon acquired Immedia Semiconductor, the Massachusetts chip startup behind the Blink line of wire-free, battery-powered home security cameras. Blink's cameras are built around Immedia's ultra-low-power video-processing silicon, which delivers roughly two years of battery life on a pair of AA cells. The deal extended Amazon's smart-home device portfolio alongside Echo and, later, Ring.

AWS acquired Sqrrl, a big-data threat-detection and security-analytics company founded by former U.S. National Security Agency staff. Sqrrl's platform combined link analysis, user-behavior analytics and threat-hunting workflows on top of large data sets. The team and technology were folded into AWS security offerings.

Amazon Pay's India business acquired Tapzo, an all-in-one aggregator app (formerly Akosha, then Helpchat) that bundled third-party services such as cab-hailing, food delivery, movie tickets, recharges and bill payment into a single interface. The move was aimed at driving Amazon Pay adoption and engagement in India.

AWS acquired CloudEndure, an Israeli company specializing in cloud migration, backup and disaster recovery. Its core technology performs continuous block-level data replication into a low-cost staging area, enabling fast failover and large-scale migrations to AWS. CloudEndure's technology later became the basis for AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery.

AWS acquired TSO Logic, a Vancouver-based startup whose analytics software modeled enterprise compute usage to show what workloads would cost to run in the cloud, where they were over-provisioned, and where savings were available. The technology was rebranded and relaunched by AWS as Migration Evaluator, a complimentary business-case tool for cloud migration planning.

Amazon Robotics acquired Canvas Technology, a Boulder, Colorado startup building fully autonomous warehouse carts. Canvas used 'spatial AI' with advanced cameras and computer vision to let vehicles self-navigate crowded industrial spaces alongside people and equipment. The team and technology were absorbed into Amazon's robotics organization.

Amazon acquired the Ad Server and Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) assets of Sizmek, then one of the world's largest independent ad servers, after Sizmek filed for bankruptcy. The ad server places and measures ads across the web, while DCO tailors creative to a consumer's data. Amazon relaunched the technology as the Amazon Ad Server (formerly Sizmek Ad Suite).

AWS acquired E8 Storage, an Israeli startup building rack-scale, NVMe flash-based storage software engineered for very low latency and high performance on demanding workloads such as real-time analytics and financial applications. The team and technology moved into AWS's Tel Aviv development center.

Amazon's Twitch acquired IGDB, a Sweden-based, community-and-automation-fed database of video-game metadata. IGDB's data was integrated to power search, discovery and game cover art across Twitch, while the standalone IGDB site continued to operate. The roughly ten-person team stayed in Sweden within Twitch's viewer-experience organization.

Amazon acquired INLT, a Los Angeles/Philadelphia customs-brokerage and import-logistics startup whose cloud software helped sellers manage customs clearance and import costs on cross-border shipments. INLT's platform was the first fully cloud-based application approved by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and DHS, supporting Amazon's end-to-end cross-border logistics for marketplace sellers.

Amazon acquired Umbra, a Finnish 3D graphics technology company known for occlusion-culling and visibility-optimization middleware used to render complex 3D scenes efficiently in major video games. Umbra's roughly 25-person team continued to operate for Amazon in Helsinki and Tampere.

Amazon acquired Art19, a podcast hosting, distribution, analytics and ad-monetization platform, folding it into Amazon Music alongside Wondery. Art19 lets creators manage content and ad operations in one place and runs a marketplace for dynamically inserted podcast ads. Amazon operates Art19 as a subsidiary supporting its podcast advertising business.

Amazon acquired Veeqo, a UK multichannel inventory, order and shipping-management software provider for merchants who fulfill from their own warehouses across channels such as Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Etsy and Walmart. Amazon later relaunched Veeqo as free shipping software for sellers, adding discounted carrier rates and integrations with Amazon Buy Shipping.

Veeqo's free software already saves sellers an average of $1,200 a year.Matt Warren — Founder and CEO, Veeqo

Amazon's autonomous-vehicle unit Zoox acquired the team from Strio.AI, a Boston robotics startup founded by MIT alumni that had built autonomous perception for robotic strawberry picking. In an acqui-hire, Strio's founder joined Zoox as a director of Perception and senior engineers moved over, and Zoox opened its first East Coast R&D office in Boston.

Amazon agreed to acquire Cloostermans, a Belgium-based mechatronics specialist (founded 1884) that designs and manufactures machinery used to move and stack heavy pallets and totes and to package products. The two companies had worked together since 2019, and Cloostermans' roughly 200 employees joined Amazon Global Robotics' European operations.

Amazon's investments in robotics and technology are supporting how we build a better and safer workplace.Ian Simpson — Vice President of Global Robotics, Amazon

Twitch, Amazon's live-streaming subsidiary, acquired Spirit AI, a natural-language-processing company, to help build more nuanced classifiers that detect harms of all kinds in written text on Twitch. The acquisition was surfaced in Twitch's late-November 2022 safety update following scrutiny of child-safety and content-moderation gaps on the platform.

Pellicano Italy S.r.l. is a special-purpose entity that had taken over a former pharmacy/parafarmacia location on Piazza Cadorna in central Milan. Amazon acquired the company reportedly to open a physical store selling health, beauty and personal-care products and over-the-counter items. This is a physical-retail / real-estate-style acquisition rather than a technology deal.

Amazon agreed to acquire Perceive, a San Jose edge-AI company and subsidiary of Xperi Inc., whose Ergo AI processors run large machine-learning models locally on power-constrained edge devices. Most of Perceive's ~44 employees were expected to join Amazon's Devices & Services division working on products such as Alexa.

Amazon moved to acquire Viziotix, a Toulouse, France startup (founded 2021) that makes a barcode-scanning software development kit (SDK) enabling any camera-equipped device to read barcodes for inventory management and data capture. The deal was surfaced through Amazon's EU Digital Markets Act killer-acquisition disclosure in July 2025.

Amazon acquired Bee, legally Bluush, Inc., a San Francisco startup (founded 2022) that makes a ~$50 AI wristband and Apple Watch app which listen to conversations to generate summaries, reminders and to-do lists. After joining Amazon's Devices & Services group, Bee shipped several new features including Voice Notes, Actions and Daily Insights.

Pixwise is a UK-based computer-vision technology company that Amazon acquired. The transaction was referenced only in European Commission Digital Markets Act materials; no detailed public description of the technology or terms is available from an official Amazon source.

Feenix.ai is a software platform purpose-built to help sellers grow their AWS Marketplace and co-selling business, with features for listings, private offers, reporting and opportunity management. It was acquired by Amazon Web Services; LinkedIn/third-party profiles indicate the deal around November 2025.

Amazon acquired Rivr (formerly Swiss-Mile), a Zurich-based robotics startup spun out of ETH Zurich's Robotic Systems Lab, which builds wheeled-legged (quadruped) robots that roll on flat ground and use legs to climb stairs and curbs, carrying payloads up to 60 kg. Amazon plans to test the robots for doorstep delivery. The deal was communicated via a notice to delivery contractors and a LinkedIn post rather than an Amazon press release.

Amazon acquired Axio (formerly Capital Float), an Indian digital-lending and checkout-finance provider offering buy-now-pay-later, personal loans and money-management products. The deal, one of Amazon's largest in India, closed after Reserve Bank of India approval and gives Amazon a licensed NBFC lending platform.

With only 1 in 6 Indian customers having access to checkout financing, growing access to credit is a fundamental priority for Amazon.Mahendra Nerurkar — Vice President, Payments, Amazon India

Amazon acquired select assets of MX Player, a leading Indian ad-supported (AVOD) video-streaming service, from Times Internet, and merged it with Amazon miniTV to launch Amazon MX Player. The combined free service reached over 250 million users in India.

The team behind Fig, a Y Combinator (2020) startup that built autocomplete and other productivity tooling for the command-line terminal, joined Amazon Web Services and Amazon acquired Fig's technology. Existing Fig features were made free, with the tooling to be integrated into AWS developer offerings.

Amazon acquired One Medical, a membership-based primary-care provider operating in-person and virtual clinics. The purchase gave Amazon a national network of primary-care offices and a technology-driven care model to build out Amazon Health Services. One Medical continued operating under its brand.

Booking an appointment, waiting weeks or even months to be seen, taking time off work, driving to a clinic, finding a parking spot, waiting in the waiting room then the exam room for what is too often a rushed few minutes with a doctor - we see lots of opportunity to both improve the quality of the experience and give people back valuable time in their days.Neil Lindsay — SVP of Amazon Health Services

Amazon acquired GlowRoad, a Bengaluru-based social/reseller commerce platform founded in 2017 whose network of resellers sell products sourced from manufacturers and wholesalers directly through their social networks (WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram). GlowRoad continued to operate as an independent mobile app after joining Amazon.

Amazon acquired the film and television studio MGM, gaining a library of thousands of films and TV episodes plus franchises such as James Bond. MGM's catalog and production talent were folded into Prime Video and Amazon Studios to deepen Amazon's original-content pipeline. The deal was announced in May 2021 and closed in March 2022.

The real financial value behind this deal is the treasure trove of IP in the deep catalog that we plan to reimagine and develop together with MGM's talented team.Mike Hopkins — SVP of Prime Video and Amazon Studios

AWS acquired Wickr, developer of end-to-end encrypted messaging, voice, video, file-sharing and collaboration technology used by enterprises and government and military agencies. AWS positioned Wickr to meet accelerating demand for secure communications amid the shift to hybrid work, and later launched the managed service AWS Wickr.

Wickr, an innovative company that has developed the industry's most secure, end-to-end encrypted, communication technology.Steve Schmidt — Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer, AWS

Amazon acquired PillPack, an online pharmacy that pre-sorts medications by dose and delivers them to customers' homes. Amazon disclosed the completed acquisition in its third-quarter 2018 results, saying the companies would work together to improve the pharmacy experience. PillPack later formed the basis of Amazon Pharmacy.

Amazon acquired Ring, maker of internet-connected video doorbells and home-security devices. The two companies said they would work together to make home security more affordable and accessible so customers can see, hear and speak to visitors from anywhere. Ring became a cornerstone of Amazon's smart-home device lineup.

Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market, the natural and organic grocery chain, in an all-cash deal at $42 per share. Whole Foods continued to operate its stores under its own brand from its Austin headquarters, with co-founder John Mackey staying on as CEO. The deal gave Amazon a large brick-and-mortar grocery footprint and anchored its physical-stores segment.

Millions of people love Whole Foods Market because they offer the best natural and organic foods, and they make it fun to eat healthy. Whole Foods Market has been satisfying, delighting and nourishing customers for nearly four decades - they're doing an amazing job and we want that to continue.Jeff Bezos — Founder and CEO, Amazon

This partnership presents an opportunity to maximize value for Whole Foods Market's shareholders, while at the same time extending our mission and bringing the highest quality, experience, convenience and innovation to our customers.John Mackey — Co-founder and CEO, Whole Foods Market

ComiXology, founded in 2007 and headquartered in New York, built the leading digital-comics platform, offering content from more than 75 publishers plus independent creators and its proprietary Guided View reading technology. Amazon acquired the company to expand digital comics and graphic novels to more readers within its reading ecosystem.

We've long admired the passion comiXology brings to changing the way we buy and read comics and graphic novels.David Naggar — Vice President, Content Acquisition and Independent Publishing, Amazon

Goodreads, founded in 2007, is the largest social site for readers and book recommendations, where members discover, rate, review and share books; it had more than 16 million members at the time of the deal. Amazon acquired the company to combine its reader community with the Kindle ecosystem and help readers and authors connect.

Amazon and Goodreads share a passion for reinventing reading.Russ Grandinetti — Vice President, Amazon Kindle Content

TenMarks offered a web-based, personalized mathematics practice and instruction platform for K-12 students, with hints, video lessons and real-time results, used across tens of thousands of US schools. Amazon acquired the company to develop educational content and applications across its platforms for students, parents and teachers.

Together, Amazon and TenMarks intend to develop rich educational content and applications, across multiple platforms, that we think teachers, parents and students will love.Dave Limp — Vice President, Amazon Kindle

Amazon acquired Zappos.com, a leader in online apparel and footwear known for its customer-service culture. Zappos continued to operate independently under its own brand and management from Las Vegas. The deal was structured as a stock-for-stock merger and closed in November 2009.

AbeBooks, based in Victoria, British Columbia, ran an online marketplace listing more than 110 million primarily used, rare and out-of-print books from thousands of independent booksellers worldwide across several regional sites. Amazon acquired it to add breadth and selection to its book business and support independent sellers.

AbeBooks brings added breadth and expanded selection to our customers worldwide.Russell Grandinetti — Vice President of Books, Amazon.com

TextPayMe was a Y Combinator-backed startup offering a peer-to-peer payment service that let people send money to one another over SMS text messages, capped at a few hundred dollars per month. Amazon absorbed the small team to build out mobile payment capabilities, later folding the technology into Amazon's mobile-payments efforts (rebranded Amazon Webpay in 2011).

Amazon acquired Back to Basics Toys, a leading online and catalog retailer specializing in hard-to-find classic toys, completing the deal on November 8, 1999. It was acquired alongside the Tool Crib assets; Amazon issued a total of 1,514,612 shares for the two transactions, with roughly $105 million of the approximately $112 million aggregate purchase price allocated to goodwill and intangibles. The catalog expanded Amazon's toys store.

Amazon acquired the catalog and online commerce assets of Tool Crib of the North (a division of Acme Electric Motor Co.), a retailer of tools and home-improvement products serving professional tool users and woodworkers. The purchase, completed October 1, 1999, was made together with the Back to Basics Toys acquisition; Amazon issued a total of 1,514,612 shares for the two deals, of which about $105 million of the roughly $112 million aggregate purchase price was allocated to goodwill and intangibles. The assets seeded Amazon's tools and hardware store (toolcrib.amazon.com).

Amazon acquired Alexa Internet, developer of a free, advertising-supported Web navigation service that works alongside internet browsers to provide information about the sites being viewed and suggest related sites. Amazon assumed all outstanding Alexa stock options and issued 4,369,884 shares, with substantially all of the approximately $250 million purchase price allocated to goodwill and intangibles. Alexa's web-crawl and traffic data became a long-running Amazon analytics property.

Amazon acquired Accept.com, a Redwood City e-commerce company developing technology to simplify person-to-person and business-to-consumer transactions on the internet. Amazon assumed all outstanding Accept.com stock options and issued 1,755,356 shares, with substantially all of the approximately $189 million purchase price allocated to goodwill and intangibles (a portion of which was expensed as in-process R&D). It was one of three all-stock acquisitions announced in April 1999 totaling roughly $645 million.

Amazon acquired LiveBid, a technology provider for live, event-based auctions on the internet and, at the time, the only provider of live online auctions. Amazon assumed all outstanding LiveBid stock options and issued 553,770 shares, with substantially all of the approximately $40 million purchase price allocated to goodwill and intangibles. LiveBid's technology was used to expand and enrich Amazon's newly launched Auctions service.

Amazon acquired e-Niche, operator of Exchange.com, a developer of internet marketplaces bringing together buyers and sellers of rare and hard-to-find items through its Bibliofind (over 9 million antiquarian and out-of-print book listings) and MusicFile (over 3 million rare recordings and music memorabilia) sites. Amazon assumed all outstanding Exchange.com options and issued 1,893,944 shares, with substantially all of the approximately $145 million purchase price allocated to goodwill and intangibles, plus up to $27.5 million in contingent shares tied to performance. The deal broadened Amazon's selection of rare and obscure books and music.