Rivr, a Swiss company that builds stair-climbing delivery robots, has been acquired by US tech giant Amazon for an undisclosed amount.
The company, which spun out of ETH Zurich’s Robotics Systems Lab in 2023, builds four-legged robots for last-mile delivery that deliver goods to the doorsteps of customers.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has been tracking the company for a while. Bezos Expeditions, his family office, led Rivr’s $22m seed round in 2024.
First reported by The Information, the acquisition signals Amazon’s intent to relocate deeper into automated doorstep delivery.
“This step will accelerate our vision of building General Physical AI through doorstep delivery, bringing robotics and AI closer to real-world deployment at scale,” Rivr CEO and cofounder Marko Bjelonic wrote in a LinkedIn post.
The robotics market is heating up in Europe. Equity funding was up 130% in 2025, compared to 2024, according to Sifted data, with robotics startups bringing in €1.6bn last year.
ETH Zurich, which is one of the top universities in Europe for spinout value creation, is seen as a core part of the region’s robotics ecosystem.
Other robotics companies to have spun out of the school include ANYbotics, a buildr of industrial inspection robots, Mimic Robotics, which is developing humanoid robot hands and Flink Robotics, which is working on robotic solutions for material handling in logistics.
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