Ocado, the leading online grocery platform and solutions provider, has today announced that it has completed the acquisition of US-based Kindred Systems.
Kindred is a robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) company that develops intelligent robots to enhance the industrial workforce. Its purpose is to augment human labour with AI robot partners, and to fully innovate commerce fulfillment operations.
Tim Steiner, CEO of Ocado, commented, 'I am delighted to announce the completion of the acquisition of Kindred Systems and to formally welcome the team to Ocado.
'We look forward to working together to accelerate the development of robotic picking solutions, improving their speed, accuracy, product range and economics, which will benefit our Ocado Solutions partners as well as Kindred Systems' existing customers.'
Marin Tchakarov, CEO of Kindred Systems, commented, 'I am proud to see Kindred Systems and our brilliant team recognised by Ocado as a leader in robotic pick and place manipulation, and we are extremely excited to realise our next chapter as part of them.
'We have achieved very strong growth with our retail e-commerce fulfilment customers over the last 3 years, and the unique challenges presented in grocery fulfilment will bring an even richer learning environment, further expanding on both our technology and market solutions set.
'Benefitting from Ocado's excellence in research, technology, product development and partnering will give Kindred Systems the opportunity to continue to grow and stay at the forefront of AI and machine learning automation and workforce collaboration.'