Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR), a company that develops autonomous mobile robots for logistics applications, has been acquired by Teradyne, Inc. for €121 million ($148 million) net of cash acquired plus €101 million ($124 million at current exchange rate) if certain performance targets are met extending through 2020.
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MiR is a company that was launched in Denmark five years ago that develops mobile industrial robots designed to work collaboratively alongside people in applications including manufacturing, logistics and healthcare.
“We are excited to have MiR join Teradyne’s widening portfolio of advanced, intelligent, automation products,” said Mark Jagiela, President and CEO of Teradyne. “MiR is the market leader in the nascent, but fast growing market for collaborative autonomous mobile robots (AMRs). Like Universal Robots’ collaborative robots, MiR collaborative AMRs lower the barrier for both large and small enterprises to incrementally automate their operations without the need for specialty staff or a re-layout of their existing workflow. This, combined with a fast return on investment, opens a vast new automation market. Following the path proven with Universal Robots, we expect to leverage Teradyne’s global capabilities to expand MiR’s reach.”
In 2017, the company tripled its previous revenue, reaching USD $12 million in sales. Growth this past year was achieved, according to Thomas Vista, MiR CEO, primarily due to multinational companies that returned with orders for larger fleets of mobile robots after they tested and analyzed the results of their single MiR robots.
“Joining Teradyne allows us to advance our engineering and development investments to provide greater value to our customers and further expand our market leadership in industrial autonomous mobile robots,” said Thomas Visti, CEO of MiR. “Teradyne’s worldwide reach, world-class engineering and support capabilities, financial strength and proven model for leveraging those strengths will help us grow in new and existing markets worldwide.”
Niels Jul Jacobsen, CSO, founder of MiR, also commented: “My main focus is to get our mobile robots out to the entire world,” he said. “With Teradyne as the owner, we will have strong backing to ensure MiR’s continued growth in the global market.”