Consumer Robotics Company Anki Abruptly Shuts Down

Barely an hour ago, Recode broke the news that Anki, the consumer robotics company behind both Vector, Cozmo, and Overdrive, will be terminating several hundred employees and shutting down on Wednesday after it failed to secure a new round of financing at the end of last week. This is a significant blow to the consumer robotics industry: Anki, which came out of stealth during Apple's WWDC in 2013, had nearly US $100 million in revenue in 2017, and they seemed to have found a sweet spot with relatively sophisticated robotic toys that were still at least somewhat affordable. Despite having sold more than 1.5 million robots (hundreds of thousands of which were Cozmos) as of late last year, it wasn't enough "to support a hardware and software business and bridge to our long-term product roadmap," Anki said in a statement sent to press today. While the details of what happened at Anki are still developing, the company told Recode that "a significant financial deal at a late stage fell through with a strategic investor and we were not able to reach an agreement." This is despite additional reports that a variety of companies, including Microsoft, Amazon, and Comcast, were all potentially interested in acquiring Anki.