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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy seems to be quite angry with regulators. Reason: Blocking corporate mergers. This includes the company’s planned acquisition of robotic vacuum maker iRobot in January 2024. Earlier this year, the US-based e-commerce giant couldn’t complete the merger of iRobot after it was blocked by the government over antitrust concerns.
Read what Amazon CEO has to say
In a recent interview with CNBC, CEO Jassy said that the acquisition would’ve helped iRobot with a significant push against its rivals.
However, regulators blocked the deal “because they worry that we’re going to feature our vacuum cleaner, the Roomba, vs. others, which of course is not our model,” he added.
Jassy also said that the move showed that regulators “trust these two large Chinese companies with maps of the inside of US consumers’ homes more than they do Amazon.”
How the blocking of the merger affected iRobot
In January, Amazon decided to drop its plans to acquire iRobot for $1.7 billion after the EU’s antitrust watchdog and the US FTC raised competition concerns. Since the failure of this merger, iRobot has laid off 31% of its staff and its shares have gone down by more than 75%.
In recent years, the robotic vacuum industry in the US has become very crowded. Companies like China-based Anker, Ecovacs and Roborock along with its US rival SharkNinja have taken out major chunks of iRobot’s once-dominant market share.
Amazon’s CEO recently released his annual shareholder letter and said he’ll continue investing in AI while committing to cost-cutting.
In the letter to shareholders, Jassy said: “I think every one of us at Amazon believes that we have a long way to go, in every one of our businesses, before we exhaust how we can make customers’ lives better and easier, and there is considerable upside in each of the businesses in which we’re investing.”
Over the past few months, the company has laid off hundreds of staff in divisions including Amazon Web Services, Prime Video service, healthcare business and Alexa voice assistant unit, extending its massive job cuts over the past two years into 2024.
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