US carrier Verizon has signed a deal to acquire Austrian industrial robotics software company Incubed IT (stylized as incubed IT) for an undisclosed fee. Its rationale is to complement its industrial 5G and edge compute portfolio, and spur its drive in the Industry 4.0 market. Verizon said it expects to “power robotic automation at scale”, making it simpler to access and cheaper to deploy.
Graz based Incubed IT offers a software platform that provides autonomous navigation tools to manage mixed fleets of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) in industrial settings. The platform includes toolkits for ‘real-time’ connectivity with robots, as well as for fleet and routing operations, and ‘near real-time’ monitoring and reporting. The platform works with “nearly any” mobile robot.
The company’s employees will join Verizon’s ‘new business incubation’ team. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2021.
Rima Qureshi, chief strategy officer at Verizon, said: “Mobile robot orchestration is a real and emerging challenge faced by enterprises today. By integrating Incubed IT’s autonomous software with Verizon’s 5G platform, we will have the ability to power robotic automation at scale. This will create new opportunities for enterprise customers to better and more effectively monitor and optimize their business processes.”
Elise Neel, vice president of new business incubation at Verizon, called Incubed IT’s autonomous fleet management software and server “foundational components for the future of terrestrial robotics”. She stated: “When we combine Incubed IT’s capabilities with the reliability, responsiveness and vast capabilities of 5G, we will enable faster, less expensive and more effective adoption of robotic automation for enterprises everywhere.”
Stephan Gspandl, chief executive at Incubed IT, commented: “We are proud of all the Incubed IT team has accomplished to get us to this point, and we look forward to expanding on our successes and capabilities. By joining the Verizon team, we have the opportunity to bring our software to broader audiences and to help create the future of robotic automation.”
