Summary
RIVR, formerly known as Swiss-Mile, is a Zurich-based robotics company that built wheeled-legged quadruped robots for “doorstep delivery” — the last steps of a package’s journey from a delivery vehicle to a customer’s door. Spun out of ETH Zurich’s Robotic Systems Lab in 2023, the company raised a $22 million seed round backed personally by Jeff Bezos in 2024, rebranded from Swiss-Mile to RIVR in 2025, and was acquired by Amazon in March 2026.
Company Story
RIVR’s technology originated as academic research at ETH Zurich’s Robotic Systems Lab, led by Professor Marco Hutter. In 2018, the team that would later found the company deployed one of the first artificial neural networks running directly on a real legged robot — ANYbotics’ ANYmal quadruped, itself another ETH Zurich spin-off — modifying it by adding wheels to its legs. The team found that combining wheeled and legged locomotion cut energy consumption significantly compared to walking alone, while also enabling the robot to climb stairs, cross curbs, and traverse rough terrain that pure wheeled robots cannot handle. This early work won an RBR50 robotics innovation award in 2021 (Uncrewed Systems; ETH Zurich).
In April 2023, Marko Bjelonic, Lorenz Wellhausen, Giorgio Valsecchi, and Alexander Reske incorporated the research as a company, initially named Swiss-Mile. Rather than continuing to build on ANYbotics’ ANYmal, the company switched to Unitree Robotics’ B2 quadruped platform as the hardware base for its commercial robot, branded “Milo,” while developing its own proprietary autonomy and AI stack (The Robot Report). After closing a $22 million seed round in August 2024 and securing early commercial pilots, the company rebranded from Swiss-Mile to RIVR in early 2025, a change CEO Marko Bjelonic described as reflecting the company’s evolution beyond “a small team emerging from university” into a business working with major logistics players (The Robot Report).
Through 2025, RIVR ran delivery pilots in Austin, Texas (with parcel platform Veho), across Europe (with Just Eat Takeaway.com, and with Swiss Post and Migros Online in Switzerland), and in Milton Keynes, UK, while developing its own second-generation hardware, the RIVR Two. In March 2026, Amazon acquired RIVR outright; the deal was first reported by The Information and confirmed by Amazon in a notice to its third-party Delivery Service Partners.
Founders
Marko Bjelonic co-founded RIVR and serves as CEO. A PhD researcher at ETH Zurich’s Robotic Systems Lab under Professor Marco Hutter, he led development of the wheeled-legged robot and its underlying Physical AI, and has described the four-legged wheeled robot to TechCrunch as being like “a dog on roller skates” (TechCrunch).
Lorenz Wellhausen co-founded RIVR and serves as CTO of Software. He worked alongside Bjelonic at ETH Zurich’s Robotic Systems Lab and has described the team’s early experiments modifying ANYbotics’ ANYmal robot by adding wheels to its legs (Uncrewed Systems).
Giorgio Valsecchi co-founded RIVR and serves as CTO of Hardware, and Alexander Reske co-founded RIVR and serves as COO; both were likewise part of the ETH Zurich Robotic Systems Lab team that developed the company’s original wheeled-legged robotics research before incorporating the company in 2023 (RIVR).
Products
RIVR’s robot, most recently branded RIVR Two, is a four-legged robot that can drive on wheels at up to roughly 15 kilometers per hour (about 9.3 miles per hour) — around twice human walking speed — while also being able to stand on its hind legs, climb stairs, cross curbs and gates, and navigate other real-world terrain that purely wheeled sidewalk robots cannot handle. The robot carries packages or food in an internal or top-mounted cargo compartment, with reported capacity above 60 pounds, and can stop at traffic signals and open gates autonomously (SiliconANGLE; The Robot Report).
RIVR describes its underlying technology as “General Physical AI”: a combination of large-scale reinforcement learning in simulation and real-world self-supervised learning, where every delivery generates data that improves the robot’s control policies over time. The company controls its full technology stack from software to hardware, which it says lets it optimize jointly for reliability, safety, and cost as it scales (RIVR).
Funding
RIVR — then still named Swiss-Mile — closed a $22 million seed round in August 2024, co-led by Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos through his investment vehicle Bezos Expeditions and Chinese venture firm HongShan (formerly Sequoia Capital China), with additional participation from the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, Armada Investment Group, and existing investor Linear Capital. The round valued the company at roughly $100-110 million and brought its disclosed total funding to approximately $25-26 million (The Robot Report; EU-Startups).
In March 2026, Amazon acquired RIVR outright in a deal that formalized a relationship dating back to the seed round; financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed by either company (TechCrunch; CNBC).
Partnerships
RIVR’s most consequential relationship is with Amazon, which invested in the company’s seed round via both Bezos Expeditions and the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund before acquiring the company outright in March 2026. Amazon has said it plans to test RIVR’s robots with third-party Delivery Service Partners to help delivery associates carry packages from vehicles to customers’ doorsteps and to improve safety outcomes during the last steps of delivery, rather than immediately deploying autonomous, driver-free delivery at scale.
Before the acquisition, RIVR built a series of commercial pilots: with parcel-delivery platform Veho in Austin, Texas, starting in May 2025; with food-delivery platform Just Eat Takeaway.com to bring its robots to European markets starting in August 2025; and with Swiss Post and Migros Online in its home market of Switzerland starting in September 2025, followed by a doorstep-delivery deployment in Milton Keynes, UK, in February 2026.
Timeline
- 2018: The founding team runs early neural-network AI directly on ANYbotics’ ANYmal legged robot at ETH Zurich.
- 2021: The wheeled-legged robotics research wins an RBR50 innovation award.
- April 2023: Marko Bjelonic, Lorenz Wellhausen, Giorgio Valsecchi, and Alexander Reske found Swiss-Mile as an ETH Zurich spin-off.
- August 2024: Swiss-Mile closes a $22 million seed round co-led by Jeff Bezos and HongShan.
- Early 2025: The company rebrands from Swiss-Mile to RIVR.
- May 2025: RIVR launches a delivery pilot with Veho in Austin, Texas.
- August 2025: RIVR partners with Just Eat Takeaway.com to expand into Europe.
- March 2026: Amazon acquires RIVR; terms are not disclosed.
Market Context
RIVR competed in the emerging “Physical AI” and last-mile delivery robotics space, distinguishing itself from wheels-only sidewalk delivery robots (such as Starship Technologies and Serve Robotics) by combining wheels with legs to handle stairs, curbs, and other real-world obstacles those robots cannot cross. It also sits adjacent to the broader quadruped-robot market populated by companies like Boston Dynamics (Spot) and Unitree, whose B2 hardware platform RIVR itself used as a base before the acquisition. Amazon’s purchase of RIVR follows its 2020 acquisition of self-driving vehicle startup Zoox and its 2022 shutdown of its own in-house Scout sidewalk delivery robot program, suggesting Amazon sees wheeled-legged robots — potentially paired with autonomous vehicles — as a more promising path into last-mile ground robotics than its earlier efforts.
Source Notes
This profile draws on RIVR’s own website and company blog, ETH Zurich partnership coverage, and reporting from The Robot Report, Uncrewed Systems, EU-Startups, TechCrunch, CNBC, RobotToday, and SiliconANGLE covering both the company’s funding history and its March 2026 acquisition by Amazon. Financial terms of the Amazon acquisition were not disclosed by either party, and total funding and valuation figures rely on third-party reporting (PitchBook, via TechCrunch and RobotToday) rather than a company-published funding history; these figures should be treated as approximate.