Robot Vacuum Roomba Maker Files for Bankruptcy After 35 Years
23 comments
·December 15, 2025xnx
So the FTC blocked Amazon's acquisition of iRobot in January 2024 and now China gains control of the assists for a bargain? Another stupid application of antitrust.
striking
From Bloomberg:
> Earnings began to decline since 2021 due to supply chain headwinds and increased competition.
I know that there's a slight difference between Chinese-state owned enterprises and Amazon, but isn't a sale to either one worrying?
avalys
In what sense is a sale to Amazon “worrying” compared to bankruptcy?
hurturue
They outsourced production to China thinking that they can just do the marketing in US.
Now they learnt that Chinese can do marketing too.
krackers
It's not just marketing, iRobot basically stopped innovating. For commodity items like robot vacuums or pool cleaners, there is a relentless pressure to innovate. You can't simply coast or else you will soon find yourself left behind.
This is a good article to describe the viewpoint of Chinese iRobot competitor https://kr-asia.com/at-usd-90-per-unit-seauto-is-quietly-swe...
jsight
Yeah, this company went through an amazingly bad period. They quite innovating, and also worked really hard to segment their products in a way that would extract every last $ out of the consumer. "Oh you want it not to run into things? You'll need one more step up for another $100-200" It wasn't really based on the hardware, so much as the intentional limitations of the software.
Meanwhile cheap roborocks had no arbitrary limitations and more honest marketing.
I miss the optimism that this company used to have, but I won't miss the entity that they became.
nobodyandproud
The best robovac was Neato. Lidar and mapping 13 years ago. No cloud.
Too bad our American leaders sold us out.
temp0826
It's pretty crazy just how much better the Neatos were than brand new ones. I wonder if that (German?) company has tried to sell the IP? RIP...
makeitdouble
How many general public appliance makers out there have a competitive production line outside of China ?
As I understand the only countries where one could barely pull that off would be Korea or Japan, and the local makers are mostly giving up as they lose too much on cost.
anonu
will be replaced by humanoid robots soon
IgorPartola
I had a Roomba about 10 years ago. It was OK but required a lot of “handholding” to not run over cords, kids toys, etc. It just was not really worth it to use it in an environment where you can’t keep everything nailed down and off the floor at all times. Relocated it to a basement level where we had much more empty but sill finished space. The cat angrily pooped just outside her litter box and the Roomba ran right over it and shredded them turds all over the floor. Since then it has lived in my mind as the dumbest smart product.
The real problem for me has been that I want something to straighten out my living spaces, not to vacuum the floors. Vacuuming is quick and a good vacuum cleaner (old school bagged kind, not a silly filter one), will do a far better job than a little battery powered gizmo anyways. But a robot capable of picking up the toys my kids like to leave out, or bringing abandoned coffee mugs to the sink (can you tell I live with multiple adults and children?) would be worth quite a bit to me. A robot capable of washing my dishes and putting away my laundry would be worth more. One capable of preparing meals would be worth more to me than a car.
Of course they would have to be 100% open source with easily replaceable and repairable components, which is where I think most of these types of projects go wrong. I remember seeing the Chefee demo and it was very cool but the main problem is that you aren’t buying a product, you are investing in the idea that the company behind it won’t go belly up in two years and brick your $60,000 chef/cabinet/fridge thing and that it won’t sell itself to e.g. Google which will cram it full of ads and spyware.
wincy
I was agreeing with you on all accounts but seriously doubt they’ll be open source. I think the average person will barely clock this as mattering, and will pay up. The market has shown time and again that consumers prefer highly integrated environments that work seamlessly vs open source, especially for hardware.
I also agree it’d be worth more to me than my car, and I’d hope much like modern cars such an expensive consumer purchase will end up with similar warranty protections and eventually a third party market for replacement parts.
Much like cars, I’m guessing it’ll be a better idea to go with a large company that’ll be able to honor that warranty without being financially ruined. The first few generations will see lots of experimentation and thus be more risky for the consumer before the market settles out with a few big winners (as is often the case).
sudosysgen
iRobot's failure is that they made a bet to use CV instead of Lidar for their mapping robots for a long time until it was too late. That made their affordable, non-mapping robots far far worse than only slightly higher priced lidar robots, while their mapping robots were too expensive for mass appeal and were still worse at navigation than up-market lidar based robots. Ultimately they were simply outcompeted.
Sprotch
:(
yieldcrv
Makes sense, 20 years of needing to have no rugs, cords, toys on the floor, masquerading as a cleaner
SoftTalker
Now all their customer data will be sold to the highest bidder.
xnx
Non-paywalled article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-15/robot-vac...
mulquin
Non-paywalled: https://archive.md/7DyNA
allears
Nope, still got a paywall
xqcgrek2
robot vacuums never made economic sense over a maid service
I wonder what happens to the app and cloud functionality.
> Under the restructuring, vacuum cleaner maker Shenzhen PICEA will receive the entire equity stake in the reorganized company. The company’s common stock will be wiped out under the proposed Chapter 11 plan.
Hopefully they keep the lights on.