Zoox acquires Strio.AI team, opens Boston office

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Strio.AI’s strawberry picking robot. The company specializes in agricultural technology. | Source: Zoox

Zoox, an Amazon-owned company developing an autonomous ride-hailing service, announced that the Strio.AI team will be joining the company. Details of the acquisition were not disclosed. 

Strio.AI is a Boston-based startup that focuses on robotic picking and pruning of strawberry crops. With the acquisition, Zoox brings Strio’s co-founder and CEO Ruijie He on as director of perception. Before Strio, he was the vice president of software at Optimus Ride. 

Zoox is also bringing on John Carter, John Wave, Nick Greene and Danaan Metge, other senior engineers from Strio. The Strio team will remain in Boston, where Zoox is opening up a research and development center. The center will be Zoox’s first on the east coast. Strio’s team brings expertise in computer vision and connections in the Boston-area to the self driving company. 

Zoox was founded in 2014 and acquired by Amazon in 2020 for an estimated $1.2 billion, although specific details of the deal were not disclosed. The company is creating an autonomous vehicle from the ground up.

The vehicle is made specifically for autonomous taxi rides, with no driver’s seat or steering wheel built in. Zoox’s vehicles are equipped with cameras and LiDAR and radar sensors that provide a 360º field of view.