HOW TO GET ACQUIRED BY AMAZON

WHEN JEFF BEZOS ISN’T PLOTTING how to blast himself into outer space or test-driving a 13-foot Transformeres que robot, he’s hunting for the next startup that will bolster his Amazon arsenal. Over nearly two decades, the retailer has gobbled up or invested in at least 128 companies from Paris to Dubai. What’s driven the Seattle behemoth to sink its tentacles into such a broad range of upstarts? “When Amazon decides it wants to win something and the market’s important to it, it will try to compete. If it can’t, it will ultimately buy the leader,” says Jeremy Levine, a partner at venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners, a shareholder in Quidsi, which Amazon purchased in 2011 (and shuttered in March). Common themes among the companies Amazon has brought into its inner circle: startups that adopted the retailer’s technology early on; that help put it in direct orbit of Apple, Google, and Netflix; or that vault it into a new geography or category, as it’s doing with its more recent Alexa Fund, which is funneling $100 million into artificial intelligence startups. While Amazon has had its share of winning bets like Zappos and Evi, if you ever get the chance to pitch Bezos, you might not want to remind him of Living Social. While Amazon doesn’t disclose its specific investments and acquisitions and declined to confirm the following transactions with

Inc., they have been reported by CB Insights. Inc. included the financial values when possible, using publicly available reports. ACQUISITION INVESTMENT ALEXA FUND RECIPIENT

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Companies that make software or hardware to simulate human behavior. Many of these technologies are used to power Alexa, Amazon’s digital assistant housed within the Echo smart speaker, which was unveiled in 2014 to compete against Apple’s Siri. — HARVEST.AI $20 MILLION 2017 EMBODIED 2016 ANGEL.AI 2016 TRACKR $500,000 2016 DEFINEDCROWD 2016 KITT.AI 2016 MARA.AI 2015 ORBEUS 2015 SAFABA TRANSLATION SOLUTIONS 2015

The six-year-old Pittsburgh-based machine translation firm founded by Robert Olszewski and Alon Lavie, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, made software that automatically translated text from one language to another. Amazon likely acquired the company, in part, to get Lavie, who was appointed to lead Amazon’s new Machine Translation R&D Group. 2LEMETRY 2015 IVONA SOFTWARE 2013 EVI TECHNOLOGIES 2013 In 2012, when William TunstallPedoe first built “Evi,” a virtual assistant, little did he know she would eventually become “Alexa.” A year later, Amazon bought the Cambridge, England– based company for more than

$26 million, eventually using its A.I. intellectual property—the ability to translate sound to text and generate voice response— along with its talent, to fuel Amazon’s own digital assistant. YAP 2011 SNAPTELL 2009

BUSINESS & CLOUD SERVICES

Companies that provide services for third-party businesses—from data management and cloud storage to secure messaging—to fuel Amazon’s wildly profitable services arm, Amazon Web Services. AWS makes cloud computing and storage software for businesses, a handful of which subsequently have received investment or an acquisition offer from Amazon. — CLOUD9 IDE 2016 NICE2016 IONIC SECURITY 2016 BIBA SYSTEMS 2016 ELEMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES $296 MILLION 2015 APPTHWACK 2015 TWILIO 2015

Shortly after Amazon announced its investment in the San Francisco cloud communication platform firm, the two companies inked a deal: Software developers using the AWS platform would now have access to Twilio’s real-time messaging service and notifications. Twilio’s co-founder and CEO, Jeff Lawson, wasn’t exactly a stranger to Amazon—he was among AWS’s first product managers; Twilio is also built atop the AWS infrastructure and is integrated into a number of Amazon services. CLUSTERK 2015 ACQUIA 2014 AMIATO 2014 PARACCEL 2012 QUORUS 2011 YIELDEX 2011

CIRTAS2011 SONIAN2011 SYSTEMS GOODDATA2009 ENGINE YARD 2009 ELASTRA 2008 THE TALK MARKET 2008 CLOTHING & ACCESSORIES

Companies that sell apparel via e-commerce or develop fashionrelated technology. — OWLET BABY CARE 2016

The Lehi, Utah– based developer of smart socks that monitor infants’ vitals raised $15 million from investors including Amazon, along with a grant from the National Institutes of Health. The company’s flagship device monitors things like an infant’s heart rate, which parents can view in a corresponding app. THALMIC LABS 2016

This startup, based in Kitchener, Ontario, makes an A.I.-infused armband that measures electrical signals in the wearer’s muscles and enables them to control everything from phones and laptops to bionic limbs (for amputees). WHOWHATWEAR $8 MILLION 2015 SHOEFITR 2015

Solving an expensive online-shopping problem for Amazon’s 2009 acquisition, Zappos— this startup helps shoppers find shoes that fit using 3-D technology, reducing customer returns. ZAPPOS $850 MILLION 2009 FABRIC.COM 2008 SHOPBOP.COM 2006

FINANCIAL SERVICES

Companies that facilitate or process digital payments or provide alternative payment methods such as gift cards— many of which were integrated into Amazon Payments, the company’s online payments processor, which launched in 2007. More recently,