\n<\/p>\n
There\u2019s something painfully American about the arc of iRobot, the company that taught your vacuum to navigate around the furniture. Founded in 1990 in Bedford, Massachusetts by MIT roboticist Rodney Brooks and his former students Colin Angle and Helen Greiner, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sunday, punctuating a 35-year run that took it from the dreams of AI researchers to your kitchen floor and, finally, to the tender mercies of its Chinese supplier.<\/p>\n
Brooks, the founding director of MIT\u2019s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and the robotics field\u2019s resident provocateur<\/a>, spent the eighties watching insects<\/a> and having epiphanies about how simple systems could produce complex behaviors. By 1990, he\u2019d translated those insights into a company that would eventually sell over 50 million robots. The Roomba, launched in 2002, became the rare gadget that transcended its category to become a verb, a meme, and, to the amusement of many, a cat-transportation device<\/a>.<\/p>\n The money soon followed, with the company raising $38 million altogether, including from The Carlyle Group, before going public in a 2005 IPO that raised $103.2 million. By 2015, iRobot was flush enough to launch its own venture arm, prompting TechCrunch to wryly declare that \u201crobot domination may have just taken another step forward<\/a>.\u201d The plan at the time was to invest $100,000 to $2 million in up to 10 seed and Series A robotics startups each year. It was the kind of move that marks a company\u2019s arrival, the moment when you\u2019re successful enough to fund the next generation\u2019s dreams.<\/p>\n Then Amazon came knocking. In 2022, the corporate giant agreed to acquire iRobot for $1.7 billion in what would have been Amazon\u2019s fourth-largest acquisition ever at the time. In a press release<\/a> announcing the tie-up, Angle, who\u2019d been CEO since the company\u2019s inception, spoke about \u201ccreating innovative, practical products\u201d and finding \u201ca better place for our team to continue our mission.\u201d It seemed like a fairy tale ending \u2014 the scrappy MIT spinoff absorbed into the Everything Store\u2019s sprawling empire.<\/p>\n Except European regulators had other ideas. Indeed, amid threats they would block the deal \u2014 they believed Amazon could foreclose rivals by restricting or degrading access to its marketplace \u2014 Amazon and iRobot agreed to kill the deal<\/a> in January 2024, with Amazon paying a $94 million breakup fee and walking away. Angle resigned. The company\u2019s shares nosedived. It shed 31% of its workforce.<\/p>\n What followed afterward was a slow-motion collapse. Earnings had been declining since 2021 thanks to supply chain chaos and Chinese competitors flooding the market with cheaper robot vacuums. The Carlyle Group, which provided a $200 million lifeline back in 2023, ultimately just prolonged the inevitable. (Carlyle finally sold that loan<\/a> last month \u2014 presumably at a discount, though it didn\u2019t specify either way.)<\/p>\n Now it\u2019s over, at least, the version of iRobot that existed previously. Shenzhen PICEA Robotics, iRobot\u2019s main supplier and lender, will take control of the reorganized company. According to a release<\/a> issued by iRobot on Sunday, the restructuring plan allows iRobot to remain as a going concern and \u201ccontinue operating in the ordinary course with no anticipated disruption to its app functionality, customer programs, global partners, supply chain relationships, or ongoing product support.\u201d<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<\/span> It also vowed to \u201cmeet its commitments to employees and make timely payments in full to vendors and other creditors for amounts owed throughout the court-supervised process.\u201d<\/p>\n What this means for customers longer term is another question, one iRobot was eager to answer when we reached out to the company. \u201cTo be clear, today\u2019s news has no impact on our business operations or our ability to serve our customers \u2013 which continues to be our top priority,\u201d said spokeswoman Mich\u00e8le Szynal in an emailed statement to TechCrunch. \u201cWe remain focused on delivering intelligent home innovations that make consumers\u2019 lives better and easier.\u202f Our products are not changing.\u201d<\/p>\n In its release, iRobot similarly promises to keep supporting existing products during restructuring; at the same time, its legal disclosures acknowledge the inherent uncertainties of bankruptcy \u2014 whether suppliers stick around, whether the process goes as planned, whether the company survives at all.<\/p>\n As The Verge noted in a story about iRobot\u2019s struggles last month<\/a>, even if iRobot eventually collapses and takes its cloud services down with it, customers\u2019 Roomba vacuums won\u2019t become useless pucks. The physical controls should keep working \u2014 a Roomba owner could still jab the button to send it off to vacuum or tell it to head home. <\/p>\n What Roomba owners would lose is everything that make the devices feel futuristic, including app-based scheduling, the ability to tell it which rooms to clean, and voice commands barked at Alexa<\/a> while sprawled on the couch.<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|<\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n