Report: Snap in talks to buy Zero Zero Robotics, best known for its Hover Camera Passport Drone, which uses facial recognition to photograph users from the air
Snap is still trying to get into the drone business. After reportedly buying LA-based drone company Ctrl Me Robotics earlier this year …
Context & Ripple Effects
Snap has been circling drones for most of a year: in December 2016 it was reported to be scouting acquisitions of drone, wearable-camera, and AR/VR startups as part of its camera-company positioning, and by March 2017 the New York Times reported it had built a drone internally with no clear ship date. In May it made its first move, reportedly picking up LA-based drone maker Ctrl Me Robotics for under $1M.
The Zero Zero Robotics talks are the second step in that sequence — this time for a company with a shipping product, the Hover Camera Passport, whose facial recognition lets it photograph users autonomously. The arc eventually pays off: five years later Snap would launch the $230 Pixy mini drone synced to Snapchat.
First-order effects
- Zero Zero Robotics gets an exit to a buyer with Snapchat's distribution, while Snap acquires proven autonomous-capture technology instead of waiting on its unclear internal drone effort reported earlier in 2017.
Second-order effects
- A closed deal would stack on top of the Ctrl Me Robotics purchase, giving Snap two drone teams and pushing it to fold aerial capture into Snapchat's camera pipeline alongside Spectacles rather than ship standalone hardware.
Third-order effects
- The pattern — small acqui-hires plus one product-bearing target, culminating in a consumer launch — points to social platforms treating autonomous cameras as acquired capability, with buy-over-build becoming the default route into hardware.
The trend: Social platforms are assembling autonomous camera hardware through strings of small acquisitions rather than in-house development, with Snap's drone run from Ctrl Me to Zero Zero to Pixy as the template.