The Robots Chasing Amazon

As with most things in the world of online retail, Fetch exists because of something Amazon.com did. In 2012, Amazon paid $775 million for warehouse robot maker Kiva Systems; shortly after, it stopped Kiva from selling its machines to anyone else. “When Amazon drops nearly $1 billion on something just to keep it out of the hands of competitors, it sends a really strong message to the market,” says Bryce Roberts, managing director of seed investor O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, which has invested in Fetch. “It left a big hole that’s still wide open.”