iRobot Corporation

Safety has always been important to me.

At iRobot, we deployed 55 million robots.

When we started deploying them, there were no standards for robots in the home, so we had to think about the safety case ourselves.

One of the things that we were worried about, three or four kilos, but how could it be dangerous? Well, if it fell down the stairs and hit a kid downstairs.

400,000.

Now I'm thinking about iRobot.

Another story, another time.

Honda demonstrated a four-fingered AI-enhanced mechanical hand that mimics the dexterity of humans and can be remotely controlled as an avatar.

weird i can understand that you're just tapped in there can't be I don't know there's gotta be something that could possibly happen where you'd be like fuck that happened sooner than I thought just not

in tech no everything's taking longer than I thought and what am I missing by the way how much people are scared of robots I worked at iRobot in 2000 fucking 10 I was a junior in college

how old was

I yeah 2010 2011

They started early production on a high-volume Optimus line in Fremont that is designed to build one million robots a year.

I can only picture the scene from iRobot.

Musk said reaching 20,000 robots a week will take at least a year, maybe a little longer.

The first outside buyers will be industrial companies using the robots for dangerous, repetitive work, and home robots would come later.

Chris, before we get to the DMA, I'd like to talk about antitrust enforcement generally before the European Commission.

You've experienced victory, including winning state aid litigation before the EU courts, setbacks, including the iRobot acquisition we'll talk about a bit later, a transaction you abandoned in the face of Commission objections, and settlements, including agreeing commitments to end investigations into the use of non-public data.

on independent sellers gathered through Marketplace and access to the Buy Box and Amazon Prime.

Looking back on these experiences, what did you learn? And more generally, what shapes the company's decision as to whether to fight, to fold, or to settle?

Great.

So final question on merger control before I turn to the quickfire questions.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the pod, You abandoned your acquisition of iRobot in January 2024 during the commission investigation.

This transaction had been approved unconditionally by the CMA, but the commission was concerned that Amazon could disadvantage rival robot vacuum suppliers through its marketplace-arming competition and innovation.

don't have.

Well, you know, iRobot eventually came out with something reasonable.

But yes, with respect to like predicting where things are going to be at, obviously they pivoted from that original patent.

Amazing.

I think two things.

One, I can't get iRobot out of my mind, right?

[laughs] I know, right.

And it's like, oh, the, the robot.