Amazon.com, Inc., doing business as Amazon, is an American multinational technology company engaged in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington, the company originally started as an online marketplace for books but gradually expanded its offerings to include a wide range of product categories, referred to as "The Everything Store". Today, Amazon is considered one of the Big Five American technology companies, the other four being Alphabet, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.
ABB Group is a Swedish-Swiss multinational electrical engineering corporation. Incorporated in Switzerland as ABB Ltd., and headquartered in Zurich, it is dual-listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange in Zurich and the Nasdaq Nordic exchange in Stockholm, Sweden, in addition to OTC Markets Group's pink sheets in the United States. ABB was ranked 340th in the Fortune Global 500 list of 2020 and has been a global Fortune 500 company for 24 years.
SoftBank Group Corp. is a Japanese multinational investment holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, that focuses on investment management. The group primarily invests in companies operating in technology that offer goods and services to customers in a multitude of markets and industries ranging from the internet to automation. With over $100 billion in capital at its onset, SoftBank's Vision Fund is the world's largest technology-focused venture capital fund. Fund investors included sovereign wealth funds from countries in the Middle East.
Logistics automation is the application of computer software or automated machinery to logistics operations in order to improve its efficiency. Typically this refers to operations within a warehouse or distribution center, with broader tasks undertaken by supply chain engineering systems and enterprise resource planning systems.
Kion Group AG is a German multinational manufacturer of materials handling equipment, with its headquarters in Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany. Its principal products are intralogistics, warehouse automation equipment, and industrial (forklift) trucks. Kion Group was founded in 2006 by the demerger of Linde's materials handling equipment operations. It is the world's second-largest manufacturer of forklifts measured by revenues.
Daniela L. Rus is a Romanian-American computer scientist. She serves as director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the author of the books Computing the Future, The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots, and The Mind's Mirror: Risk and Reward in the Age of AI.
Suning.com Co., Ltd., formerly Suning Commerce Group Co., Ltd., is one of the largest non-government retailers in China, headquartered in Nanjing, Jiangsu. Suning has more than 10,000 stores nationwide and its e-commerce platform, Suning.com ranks among top three Chinese B2C companies. The operation categories include physical merchandise, such as home appliances, 3C products, books, general merchandise, household commodities, cosmetics and baby care products, content products and service merchandise with the total number of SKU exceeding 3 million. It was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2004. In 2021, Suning.com ranked 328th on the Fortune Global 500 list.
Amazon Robotics LLC, formerly Kiva Systems, is a Massachusetts-based company that manufactures mobile robotic fulfillment systems. It is a subsidiary of Amazon.com. Its automated storage and retrieval systems have been used in the past by companies including The Gap, Walgreens, Staples, Gilt Groupe, Office Depot, Crate & Barrel, Amazon and Saks 5th Avenue. Employees of Erstwhile Kiva now only work in Amazon warehouses.
Comau is an Italian multinational company in the automation field based in Turin, Italy. It is a part of the automaker Stellantis. The company is present in 13 countries and employs 4,000 people.
Dematic is an American supplier of materials handling systems, software and services. With a growth rate of 21.2% in 2021 Dematic was listed as the world's second-largest materials handling systems supplier with a revenue of 3.2 billion USD. The company employs over 10,000 people and has engineering centres and manufacturing facilities in the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Mexico, Australia, Belgium, China, Italy, Spain, France, Lithuania and Czech Republic. Its customer base includes small, medium and large companies in several other countries across six continents.
A cobot, or collaborative robot, also known as a companion robot, is a robot intended for direct human-robot interaction within a shared space, or where humans and robots are in close proximity. Cobot applications contrast with traditional industrial robot applications in which robots are isolated from human contact or the humans are protected by robotic tech vests. Cobot safety may rely on lightweight construction materials, rounded edges, and inherent limitation of speed and force, or on sensors and software that ensure safe behavior.
JD.com, Inc., also known as Jingdong, formerly called 360buy, is a Chinese e-commerce company headquartered in Beijing. It is one of the two massive B2C online retailers in China by transaction volume and revenue, and is a major competitor to Alibaba-run Tmall. With revenues more than US152.8 billion in 2023, JD.com is China’s largest retailer by revenue, and ranks 52 on Fortune Global 500. JD.com’s portfolio spans across retail, technology, logistics, health care, industrials, property management, private label, insurance, and international business.
Prologis, Inc. is a real estate investment trust headquartered in San Francisco, California that invests in logistics facilities. The company was formed through the merger of AMB Property Corporation and Prologis in June 2011, which made Prologis the largest industrial real estate company in the world. As of December 2022, the company owned 5,495 buildings comprising about 1.2 billion square feet in 19 countries across North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. According to The Economist, its business strategy is focused on warehouses that are located close to huge urban areas where land is scarce. It serves about 6,600 tenants. Prologis began to expand its non-real estate business, Essentials, in 2022, offering customers solar power, racking systems, forklifts, generators, EV charging infrastructure, and other logistics tech equipment for purchase.
Argo AI LLC was an autonomous driving technology company headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company was co-founded in 2016 by Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander, veterans of the Google and Uber automated driving programs. Argo AI was an independent company that built software, hardware, maps, and cloud-support infrastructure to power self-driving vehicles. Argo was mostly backed by Ford Motor Co. (2017) and the Volkswagen Group (2020). At its peak, the company was valued at $7 billion.
SenseTime is a partly state-owned publicly traded artificial intelligence company headquartered in Hong Kong. The company develops technologies including facial recognition, image recognition, object detection, optical character recognition, medical image analysis, video analysis, autonomous driving, and remote sensing. Since 2019, SenseTime has been repeatedly sanctioned by the U.S. government due to allegations that its facial recognition technology has been deployed in the surveillance and internment of the Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities. SenseTime denies the allegations.
Bruce Welty is an American entrepreneur and businessman who designs and builds warehouse management systems (wms) and e-commerce order fulfillment systems. Welty is a founder of AllPoints Systems, Inc., Quiet Logistics, Inc., and Locus Robotics Corporation. He is the former chairman of the board for Locus and former chief executive officer and chairman of the board for Quiet Logistics. Mr. Welty holds 11 patents. His media appearances include 60 Minutes, CNN, CNBC and Bloomberg News.
Zoox, Inc. is an American technology company subsidiary of Amazon developing autonomous vehicles that provide mobility as a service. It is headquartered in Foster City, California and has offices of operations in the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle, Washington. Zoox sits in the Amazon Devices & Services organization alongside other Amazon units like Amazon Lab126, Amazon Alexa, and Kuiper Systems.
Berkshire Grey, Inc. is an American technology company based in Bedford Massachusetts that develops integrated artificial intelligence (“AI") and robotic solutions for e-commerce, retail replenishment, and logistics. The company's systems automate pick, pack and sort operations.
GLP is a global owner, developer and operator of logistics real estate, digital infrastructure and renewable energy. GLP also invests in and incubates new businesses that improve efficiency and drive growth across its platforms. The company's warehouses serve logistics service providers, manufacturers, retailers and e-commerce companies such as Amazon and JD.com.
Plus is an American autonomous driving technology company based in Santa Clara, California. The company develops Level 4 autonomous driving technology for commercial freight trucks. In 2019, the company completed the first cross-country driverless freight delivery in the U.S. The company's self-driving system began to be used commercially in 2021.
