Ring deal completed by Amazon

Amazon has closed the $1bn acquisition of electronic doorbell maker Ring.

The acquisition that was originally announced in February but was closed on Thursday 12th April, now means that Amazon owns a major player in DIY video security systems. The company makes wireless doorbells with cameras, home CCTV and a home security system with keypads, contact sensors and motion detectors.

The purchase of Ring is the second largest acquisition to date after Amazon’s $13.7 purchase of Whole Foods Market.

Dave Limp, Amazon’s head of devices under whose division Ring will now report to, said of the deal: “Ring was doing great. It was growing remarkably year-on-year by any metric, including in the number of customers but also by traditional financial metrics, from already sizeable numbers – so we feel like it was a great deal for both sides.”

Amazon celebrated the acquisition by dropping the price of the Ring video doorbell system from £159 to £89. This is a move expected to be the first of many across the newly acquired brand’s SKUs.

Ring founder and chief executive Jamie Siminoff, who will stay in place under Amazon, said: “I call this deal a milestone and not an acquisition or an exit, because I see it as a step along the road of our mission to provide effective and affordable protection for neighbourhoods.

“Combining with Amazon allows us to come into a large organisation that has a lot of different support mechanisms, and leverage them, be it technology, a service or something else, to scale much faster than we would have been able to do before.”

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