Amazon acquires Fauna Robotics and its approachable humanoid Sprout

The deal, Amazon’s second robotics acquisition this month, brings a 50-pound, 3.5-foot bipedal robot called Sprout into the company’s portfolio, less than two months after Fauna launched it to research and development partners. Terms were not disclosed.

The race to put a humanoid robot in every home has a new entrant. Amazon has acquired Fauna Robotics, a two-year-old New York startup whose robot, Sprout, is designed to be approachable enough to stand next to a child rather than behind a safety cage. The deal closed last week, according to people familiar with it cited by Bloomberg, and was confirmed by Amazon on Tuesday. Terms were not disclosed.

Fauna was founded in 2024 by Rob Cochran and Josh Merel, two engineers whose paths crossed at Meta. Cochran was head of product at CTRL-labs, a neural interface startup that Meta acquired in 2019, and later spent time at Goldman ...