SoftBank pays $2.8B to acquire 40% stake in warehouse automation firm AutoStore
DUNCAN RILEY, 05 April 2021
SoftBank Group Corp. said today it has invested $2.8 billion to acquire a 40% stake in Norwegian warehouse automation company AutoStore AS.
SoftBank, Japan’s largest telecommunications companies and one of the world’s largest venture capital firms, acquired shares in the company from funds affiliated with Thomas H. Lee Partners L.P. and EQT Private Equity, among other shareholders. According to the Wall Street Journal, the deal values AutoStore at $7.7 billion.
Founded in 1997, AutoStore offers a warehouse system intended for small-goods handlers, including any warehouse old or new. Using standardized boxes stacked in a cube, the company’s system is claimed to be the most space-efficient goods-to-person system on the market and can double storage capacity without increasing the warehouse footprint.
The company’s cubic design is claimed to allow customers to store four times the inventory in the same space, or all of their existing inventory in 25% of the space. AutoStore says that its solution allows customers to “redefine space,” enabling it to serve a range of markets as diverse as e-commerce, grocery, industrial and healthcare in any warehouse, retail location or other facility.
