Fundings, acquisitions and IPOs, June 2018 - The Robot Report

PTC (NASDAQ:PTC), a IoT, Industry 4.0 and control software provider to government and industry, has partnered with Rockwell Automation (NYSE:ROK), the world's largest company dedicated to industrial automation and information, "to accelerate growth for both companies and enable them to be the partner of choice for customers around the world who want to transform their physical operations with digital technology." Rockwell is making a $1 billion equity investment in PTC as part of the deal in which the two agreed to align their respective smart factory technologies and industrial automation platforms. JD (JingDong) (NASDAQ:JD), the Chinese equivalent to Amazon and China's 2nd largest e-commerce provider, raised $500 million from Google/Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG). Like Amazon, JD is heavy in the automated logistics business and now, with this investment, JD plans to open restaurants staffed by robots starting this August and ramping up to 1,000 by 2020. JD is also involved in last mile deliveries and just launched 20 mobile robot carts in the Beijing area (each robot can deliver up to 30 different parcels).