How iRobot lost its way home

There’s 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.

In a statement to TechCrunch on Sunday, Angle reflected on the company’s downfall with evident frustration. “For more than 35 years, iRobot led the consumer robotics industry and created a category that brought robots into millions of homes. Today’s outcome is profoundly disappointing — and it was avoidable,” he said. “This is nothing short of a tragedy for consumers, the robotics industry, and America’s innovation economy. Regulatory opposition to the Amazon-iRobot acquisition removed the most viable path for a pioneering American robotics company to scale and compete globally.”

It also vowed to “meet its commitments to employees and make timely payments in full to vendors and other creditors for amounts owed throughout the court-supervised process.”

What this means for customers longer term is another question, one iRobot was eager to answer when we reached out to the company. “To be clear, today’s news has no impact on our business operations or our ability to serve our customers – which continues to be our top priority,” said spokeswoman Michèle Szynal in an emailed statement to TechCrunch. “We remain focused on delivering intelligent home innovations that make consumers’ lives better and easier. Our products are not changing.”

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 — whether suppliers stick around, whether the process goes as planned, whether the company survives at all.

Update: This story has been updated with comment from iRobot and from Angle, its co-founder and longtime CEO.