Alphabet-Owned Intrinsic Acquires Robotic Software Company

Intrinsic, an Alphabet-owned robotic software company, is purchasing Vicarious to pursue the mutual aim of accelerating Robots as a Service (RaaS).

A team of engineers, roboticists and “business professionals” from Vicarious, as well as CEO Scott Phoenix, will join Intrinsic’s team under the terms of the deal. A smaller team from Vicarious will join DeepMind’s research team alongside Vicarious CTO Dileep George.

Launched in September 2021, Intrinsic was established as a robotics firm with a software-first approach, seeking to streamline the process of developing robots to make it more intelligent; targeting everything from agriculture to clean energy. 

Vicarious has been around for far longer, launching in 2011. In its lifetime it has attracted investments from major industry players such as Jeffrey Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Samsung, raising $250 million in the process. The company describes its tech as, “a turnkey robotics solutions integrator using AI to automate tasks too complex and versatile for traditional automation;” with these tasks including palletizing, picking and packing.

“For more than a decade, Vicarious has been pushing the boundaries of intelligent robotics and AI across multiple industries with visionary customers, building an interdisciplinary team and unique culture in the process,” said Intrinsic CEO Wendy Tan-White said. “We believe that combining our efforts will help us solve industry problems faster and accelerate our shared mission.”