AutoStore Stock Adds Warehouse Automation as a Service

An important part of the mythology of startups in the United States is the origin story. For instance, some of the biggest tech companies in the world, like Amazon and Microsoft, originally launched out of the founder’s garage. In Norway, it’s barns. That’s how AutoStore (AUTO.OL), a pure-play stock in warehouse automation, got its start. As the story goes, the company initially operated out of a red barn as a television repair business that later expanded into peddling electrical components. It eventually became the largest parts supplier in Scandinavia and outgrew its warehouse. That’s when an employee had an idea to fill all the empty air space in the building with stacks of modular warehouses operated by robots. That idea became AutoStore, which IPO’d in 2021, as the biggest public listing out of Norway in two decades.

These details come from The Financial Times, which did an excellent feature on th