Shopify sells 6 River Systems to new owner

Final week, Shopify introduced that it might be the final main tech agency to endure mass layoffs. The corporate is shedding 20% of its 11,600 workers. The information got here throughout earnings that beat Wall Road’s expectations, and in consequence pushed the inventory value greater.

The announcement additionally included the information that the warehouse automation firm 6 River Programs, which the Canadian e-commerce big purchased for almost half a billion in 2019, has discovered its new proprietor. It was nearly as good timing as anybody may ask for. The class has been on the rise for the previous decade, however issues actually began to select up velocity in the course of the pandemic and 6 River had a wholesome five-year begin.

However Shopify finally determined to launch 6 River amid wider losses. Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke didn’t straight handle gross sales in his open letter, the place he addressed the layoffs. Nevertheless, addressing the associated sale of Shopify Logistics to Flexport, he famous:

Shopify’s core quest is to make commerce easier, simpler, extra democratic, extra participatory, and extra frequent. I feel now we have created the most effective buying and selling platform on this planet for this. Technological progress all the time tends in direction of simplicity, and entrepreneurs are extra profitable after we simplify. However we are actually on the daybreak of the age of synthetic intelligence, and the brand new capabilities that include it are unprecedented. Shopify is privileged to be among the many firms more than likely to make use of AI to assist our prospects. A co-pilot for entrepreneurship is now potential. Our core mission calls for that we construct the absolute best proper now, and that has fully modified.

Clearly, the acquisition of 6 River was a part of enhancing the logistics facet of the enterprise by offering automated 3PL to distributors. Ocado Group, a UK grocery expertise licensee, will develop into the brand new father or mother firm of the robotics agency.

“We’re happy to welcome our new colleagues to the Ocado household. Along with bringing thrilling new IP and potentialities to the broader Ocado expertise area, 6 River Programs brings invaluable industrial and R&D experience within the non-food retail segments, Ocado CEO James Matthews mentioned in an announcement. “Chuck robots are at present used with greater than 70 prospects in additional than 100 warehouses worldwide. We sit up for supporting 6 River Programs to construct on these and new relationships within the years to return.”

Questions surrounding the deal stay. As Jerome Dubois, co-founder of 6 River/Vice President of Shopify Logistics, informed me in an interview not too long ago, the robotics agency has entered right into a take care of Shopify that permits it to proceed offering programs to prospects. This checklist, which incorporates Ocado, was very totally different from Amazon’s Kiva deal, which abruptly denied prospects entry to robotic programs.

Dubois says that they had the dialog “from the entrance,” including, “We had a powerful constructive trajectory; we had sturdy buyers. Everybody was actually optimistic about it. It did not occur. It was the alternative. We had been run independently of Shopify. We proceed to speculate and develop our enterprise.” ”

This dialog happened on the finish of March. Financial headwinds have a means of shortly altering this stuff.