Crypto World

Amazon (AMZN) Stock Climbs Following Fauna Robotics Deal

Published

4 weeks ago

25 March 2026

NewsAdmin

Key Takeaways

Amazon has finalized its purchase of Fauna Robotics, a humanoid robot company based in New York and established in 2024 by former engineers from Meta and Google.
The startup’s flagship product, Sprout, is a bipedal humanoid robot measuring 3’6″ tall with a $50,000 price tag, operating on NVIDIA’s Jetson Orin technology.
The transaction was completed last week, with no public disclosure of the acquisition price.
Approximately 50 Fauna employees will transition to Amazon’s Personal Robotics Group in New York, functioning under the brand “Fauna, an Amazon company.”
This acquisition follows closely on the heels of Amazon’s purchase of Rivr, a Swiss robotics company, indicating an aggressive expansion into consumer and delivery automation.

On Tuesday, Amazon publicly confirmed the completion of its acquisition of Fauna Robotics, a startup focused on humanoid robots that was launched in 2024 by engineering veterans from Meta and Google. The transaction reached its conclusion last week, although the purchase price remains undisclosed.

$AMZN has acquired Fauna Robotics marking its entry into the consumer humanoid market after the deal closed last week.
Fauna is developing a compact 42-inch humanoid called Sprout that can walk, grip objects, interact with people and even dance. pic.twitter.com/ibRfxcIOuT
— Shay Boloor (@StockSavvyShay) March 24, 2026

With this strategic purchase, Amazon enters the increasingly competitive arena of humanoid robotics, a sector that has witnessed substantial growth and innovation in recent years.

The flagship offering from Fauna is Sprout — a two-legged robot that stands at 3 feet 6 inches and tips the scales at 50 pounds. The design philosophy emphasizes accessibility and consumer appeal rather than industrial warehouse applications.

AMZN Stock Card
Amazon.com, Inc., AMZN

Priced at $50,000, Sprout is packaged with integrated software, gripper attachments, and a replaceable battery providing approximately 3 hours of operational time. The robot leverages NVIDIA’s Jetson Orin robotics computing platform and features memory capabilities that develop over time.

Sprout’s capabilities include walking, dancing, door manipulation, name recognition, and engaging in two-way conversations. Notable early adopters include Disney and Hyundai’s Boston Dynamics division.

The entire Fauna team of approximately 50 personnel will relocate to an Amazon facility in New York, maintaining operations under the designation “Fauna, an Amazon company.” Both co-founders, Rob Cochran and Josh Merel, will remain with the organization.

The integration places Fauna within Amazon’s Personal Robotics Group — a distinct division separate from the company’s warehouse automation operations.

Amazon’s Robotics Evolution

Amazon’s involvement in robotics extends over ten years. The company’s $775 million purchase of Kiva Systems in 2012 established the foundation for Amazon Robotics, which currently powers the company’s warehouse automation infrastructure.

Amazon previously ventured into the home robotics market with Astro, a $1,600 mobile household robot introduced in 2021 that continues to operate on an invitation-only basis. Sprout represents a more targeted consumer-focused initiative.

The Fauna acquisition arrives mere days after Amazon revealed its purchase of Rivr, a Swiss enterprise developing robotic solutions for last-mile delivery.

Intensifying Competition in Humanoid Robotics

Amazon enters an increasingly saturated marketplace. Tesla is advancing its Optimus humanoid robot at its Fremont manufacturing facility, with CEO Elon Musk projecting annual production of 1 million units.

Additional competitors in this domain include 1X, Figure AI, Apptronik, Agility Robotics, and China-based Unitree.

Amazon has indicated intentions to leverage its robotics knowledge, retail infrastructure, and devices division expertise to investigate potential applications for personal robots in consumer settings.

According to an Amazon spokesperson, the company is “excited about Fauna’s vision to build capable, safe, and fun robots for everyone.”

AMZN shares concluded Tuesday’s trading session with a 2.28% increase, gaining $4.73.

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Crypto World

LayerZero Says Kelp Setup Caused Exploit, as Aave Loss Questions Mount

Published

4 minutes ago

20 April 2026

NewsAdmin

LayerZero Says Kelp Setup Caused Exploit, as Aave Loss Questions Mount

Interoperability protocol LayerZero claims that an inadequate setup tied to Kelp’s decentralized verifier network (DVN) enabled malicious actors to steal $290 million from Kelp DAO, adding that preliminary signs point to North Korea-linked threat actors.

An attacker drained about 116,500 Restaked ETH (rsETH), worth as much as $293 million at the time, from Kelp DAO’s LayerZero-powered rsETH bridge on Saturday.

LayerZero said Monday that the exploit stemmed from a single point of failure in Kelp’s setup, which relied on a single LayerZero DVN as the only verified path, despite LayerZero previously advising them against this.

“LayerZero and other external parties previously communicated best practices around DVN diversification to KelpDAO. Despite these recommendations, KelpDAO chose to utilize a 1/1 DVN configuration.”

In practice, that meant Kelp relied on a single verification path for cross-chain messages rather than requiring multiple independent checks.

The exploit quickly shifted attention from the technical cause to the question of who should absorb the losses, while the fallout spread into Aave, where the attacker used rsETH as collateral to borrow real liquidity.

Aave’s total value locked (TVL) had fallen by about $8.9 billion to $17.5 billion at the time of writing after the exploiter used the stolen funds to borrow on Aave, leaving about $195 million in “bad debt,” triggering withdrawals on the lending protocol.

LayerZero said Kelp’s rsETH bridge relied solely on the LayerZero Labs DVN, and argued that the incident reflected an unsafe application configuration rather than a compromise of LayerZero itself. The company said it is now urging all applications using 1/1 DVN setups to migrate to multi-DVN configurations and will stop signing or attesting messages for apps that retain the single verifier design.

Losses spark blame fight after $290 million Kelp exploit

With no recovery or compensation plan yet announced, users and market observers spent Monday debating whether losses should sit with Kelp DAO, LayerZero, Aave or rsETH holders themselves.

Yishi Wang, founder and CEO of open-source hardware wallet OneKey, said that the best path forward was to negotiate with the hacker, offer a 10% to 15% bounty, and get the bulk of the funds back.

“If negotiations fail, LayerZero’s ecosystem fund should foot the bulk of the bill—it’s got the deepest pockets and the most long-term skin in the game,” wrote the founder in a Monday X post, adding that Kelp DAO is “broke” and could make it up with tokens and future revenue, or consider selling the project.

Analytics platform DeFiLlama’s pseudonymous founder, 0xngmi, outlined three solutions, including the option to “socialize” losses among all users, “rug rsETH holders on L2s,” or try to return holder balances to a pre-hack snapshot, which would be “very hard to do,” he wrote in a Monday X post.

Cointelegraph reached out to Aave for comment, but had not received a response by publication.

Exploit raises Aave liquidation risks

Investor concerns about the Kelp exploit have significantly reduced Ether (ETH) liquidity on Aave, the lending protocol’s core collateral asset.

This low liquidity presents a “critical safety risk where liquidations of ETH collateral cannot take place while markets are at 100% utilization,” said MoneySupply, the pseudonymous head of strategy at Aave competitor lending protocol Spark, in a Saturday X post.

“With current illiquidity conditions on Aave, a 15-20% ETHUSD price drop could cause significant bad debt accumulation (on top of any potential issues attributable to the direct rsETH exploit),” he said.