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THE GREAT EXIT QUEUE The list of G2P vendors exploring exits is increasing by the day. Pandemic-infused growth in the sector pushed up valuations and a few companies managed to IPO in 2021, including Berkshire Grey and Autostore (both backed by SoftBank incidentally). An IPO is a route for investors to exit their investments and "cash in". Another route is to sell to a corporate buyer. For example, Fetch Robotics (incidentally also backed by SoftBank) was acquired by Zebra. There are other routes, including secondary sales, i.e. when one investor sell to another investor, such as when EQT sold the majority of...

Trade show report: Shoptalk Europe, London, UK June 6-8, 2022 STIQ visited Shoptalk Europe 2022 and loved the ambience at this show. Few other shows manage to replicate this kind of environment. There is a huge agenda with quality speakers from retailers, grocers and (of course) vendors talking on a variety of topics. The talks including retailers & grocers were highly appreciated by the audience. Shoptalk takes great care at creating ambience at their events. We have never been at a show where there are raised audience seating as in the background (perhaps we need to get out more?) Clip from the main auditorium/hall. Small details...

Robotics Summit (https://www.roboticssummit.com/, Massachusetts, US) is a three year old show. The 2022 event is the first since 2019 (due to the pandemic). Our visit to the Robotics Summit in Boston, MA was prompted by other people talking about the show and the fact that it is based in the middle of the largest robotics cluster in the US and North America. KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM BOSTON ROBOTICS SUMMIT 2022 Presentation on Sensor fusion was very helpful to a) learn more about the various different perception sensors in the market right now b) the potential difficulties with sensor fusion and c) current state...

Amazon Go was announced in 2015 and in 2022 Amazon started selling the technology (renamed to "Just Walk Out") to external customers... seriously. The first ever active trade show attendance (to STIQs knowledge) for Just Walk Out was at The Retail Technology Show in the UK in April 2022. Amazon had showcased the technology elsewhere, but not actively selling it to visitors. There are, of course, many different competitive solutions in the market and AiFi is one of these. We first saw AiFi at NRF in New York in 2019. In January 2022, Aldi opened an AiFi-powered autonomous store in Greenwich, called...