Tech startup Arrive makes acquisition amid plans to go public
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Just days after announcing plans to go public via a merger with a Canadian company, Indianapolis-based smart-mailbox startup Arrive Technology Inc. is adding to its portfolio.
The company announced Monday it has acquired AirBox Technologies, headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, though financial terms are not being disclosed.
As a result of the deal, AirBox CEO Brandon Pargoe will serve as vice president of product operations for Arrive.
Arrive CEO Dan O’Toole told Inside INdiana Business that the two companies developed similar products around the same time.
“We’re both working on a receptacle for autonomous logistics, delivery and pickup,” he said. “I think they went for a different customer, a smaller user, and we started developing in the B2B space. And I think there’s a great intersection, because they’ve got actual product developed that fills some niches that we’ve identified recently, that may be faster to market than than we thought they would be.”
Arrive was founded in 2019 and has developed a climate-controlled, secure, smart mailbox for deliveries made by drones, couriers or robots. The mailbox could be used to keep food deliveries warm or cold, and also lock packages in place until the owner retrieves them.
Airbox, meanwhile, was founded in 2015 by Pargoe and has developed two products–AirBox Home and AirBox Deep–with the goal of delivering medications to remote locations.
“I think it’s good to get great minds that are pioneering in this industry together,” O’Toole said. “It’s great consolidation for the market, and I couldn’t be happier with it.”
The acquisition includes all of AirBox’s intellectual property, including several patents related to winch capabilities, which Arrive says is a key component for autonomous delivery drones.
The announcement of the acquisition came just a few days after Arrive announced it had entered into a merger agreement with Bruush, an e-commerce company that sells electric toothbrushes based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
The deal, expected to close in the first quarter of 2024, will combine the two companies under the Arrive name, trading on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the ticker symbol ARRV. The combined company will be based in Indianapolis and led by O’Toole.
O’Toole says everything is leading up to Arrive’s product rollout in 2024. The company plans to deploy 50 of its smart mailboxes in the first quarter, with an aggressive goal of having 2,000 units in the field by the end of the year.
“We want to be very controlled. We want to learn from what we’re deploying and implement that and very quickly and naturally into our new development,” O’Toole said. “We don’t want to get way ahead of ourselves and develop a bunch of product that we missed the mark on a little bit.”
Arrive originally did business as Dronedek before rebranding earlier this year.