The popular cleaning robot Roomba is going to be an Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) product.
The e-commerce giant announced Friday it signed an agreement to buy Bedford, Massachusetts-based Roomba maker iRobot Corp. (NASDAQ: IRBT) in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $1.7 billion, including iRobot’s net debt.
In a securities filing, iRobot said it plans cost-reduction actions that will include laying off approximately 140 employees, or 10% of the company’s global workforce. The company has over 1,370 full-time employees, with 30% based outside of the U.S.
A spokesperson for iRobot declined to answer questions about the impact of the layoffs on the company’s Massachusetts workforce, but said that the reduction in force is “completely separate” from Friday’s Amazon announcement. In public documents, iRobot said that “certain non-core engineering functions” will be moved to lower-cost regions.
Amazon, one of the state’s largest employers, had more than 20,000 employees…
Read the full story from the Washington Business Journal.
