{"id":394593,"date":"2026-03-20T07:17:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T07:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/394593\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T07:17:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T07:17:13","slug":"amazon-buys-robot-maker-rivr-to-win-last-mile-delivery-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/394593\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon Buys Robot Maker RIVR to Win Last-Mile Delivery Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amazon<\/a> has acquired RIVR<\/a>, a company that uses physical artificial intelligence and wheeled-legged robots to automate doorstep delivery.<\/p>\n

RIVR CEO and Co-Founder Marko Bjelonic<\/a> announced the acquisition in a Thursday (March 19) post<\/a> on LinkedIn, and several media reports said an Amazon spokesperson confirmed the deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis step will accelerate our vision of building General Physical AI through doorstep delivery, bringing robotics and AI closer to real-world deployment at scale,\u201d Bjelonic said in his post.<\/p>\n

Bjelonic added: \u201cI\u2019m incredibly proud of what RIVR built, and even more excited about what we will accomplish next at Amazon.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Information reported<\/a> Thursday that an Amazon spokesperson confirmed that Amazon acquired RIVR.<\/p>\n

RIVR is based in Switzerland and was formerly known as Swiss-Mile, according to the report.<\/p>\n

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CNBC reported<\/a> Thursday that Amazon confirmed the acquisition of RIVR and that the company made the purchase this week but didn\u2019t publicize it.<\/p>\n

An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC that the move \u201creflects our commitment to a continued investment in research\u201d and efforts to improve safety for the company\u2019s delivery personnel, per the report.<\/p>\n

PYMNTS reported in August 2024, when RIVR was known as Swiss-Mile, that Swiss-Mile raised $22 million in a seed round<\/a> and that the investors included Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund and Bezos Expeditions.<\/p>\n

The company now known as RIVR was incorporated in 2023. It said in an August 2024 press release that it developed wheel-legged robots with autonomy that\u2019s driven by AI and that in its first year it \u201cachieved early successes with pilot deployments among key customers, including last-mile delivery in smart cities and security for critical infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company rebranded to RIVR in March 2025 as it prepared to launch field testing of its delivery robots<\/a> in partnership with major logistics carriers.<\/p>\n

RIVR said in a May 2025 press release<\/a> that it launched in the United States through a partnership with alternative parcel delivery platform Veho<\/a>. It said the companies had already introduced RIVR\u2019s wheel-legged robots in Austin, where they would deliver eCommerce parcels.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the exponential rise in eCommerce, the last mile has become the most critical \u2014 and complex \u2014 link in the logistics chain,\u201d Bjelonic said in the release.<\/p>\n

For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI\u00a0Newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amazon has acquired RIVR, a company that uses physical artificial intelligence and wheeled-legged robots to automate doorstep delivery.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,1463,289,290,18,19,17,179864,5,1351,179745,1222,82,2350],"class_list":["post-394593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-amazon","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-last-mile-delivery","tag-news","tag-pymnts-news","tag-rivr","tag-robotics","tag-technology","tag-whats-hot"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116260283692996613","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}