Vacuums are supposed to suck up dust, not bite it. IRobot, the company that makes the Roomba, filed for bankruptcy protection Sunday night and announced that it will be acquired by its main manufacturer and lender, China-based Picea Robotics.
Don’t panic: iRobot said the restructuring won’t affect its existing products or customer service. Worst case, if Picea—which also sells robot vacuums and makes them for other companies—ultimately decides to strip iRobot for parts, your Roomba should still work, just without an app or cloud connectivity, the Verge reported last month when iRobot forewarned of bankruptcy.
IRobot couldn’t clean up its act
The company’s value crashed from $3.56 billion in 2021 to ~$140 million now, according to data compiled by the London Stock Exchange Group. In 2015, iRobot had so much money that it launched a VC arm. But in recent years, its business has resembled that museum exhibit of the industrial robot arm endlessly sweeping a pool of liquid:
- iRobot still controls 42% of the US robo-vacuum market, but cheaper Chinese alternatives and post-pandemic supply chain issues have caused its earnings to decline since 2021.
- In 2022, a $1.7 billion acquisition deal by Amazon came to the rescue, but antitrust concerns from European regulators tanked the deal in 2024. IRobot’s then-CEO stepped down, its stock plummeted, it laid off 31% of employees, and it fell behind on payments to Picea.
- This year, a 46% tariff imposed by the US on goods from Vietnam—where Picea builds most Roombas—cost iRobot $23 million and complicated its future-planning, according to court filings.
Now, Picea will take full control of iRobot and cancel $190 million in debt that it bought from iRobot’s original lender last month, plus tens of millions more that iRobot already owed Picea.
Caution: iRobot’s co-creator Rodney Brooks, the founding director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, recently argued that “a lot of money will have disappeared” over the next 15 years as Silicon Valley tries to make humanoid robots a reality.—ML
This report was originally published by Morning Brew.
