Amazon's $1.7B acquisition collapsed (Jan 2024); going-concern warning; filed for bankruptcy and is being acquired by China's Picea Robotics.
The rise & fall
9 moments · 1990–2026
The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.
1990
🌱
1990
Founded by MIT roboticists
Colin Angle, Helen Greiner and Rodney Brooks start with military and space robots before conquering living rooms.
Wikipedia
2002
2002
The Roomba arrives
The robot vacuum becomes a category — and then the category.
Wikipedia
2015
🦄
2015
A billion-dollar bot maker
Roomba sales carry the market cap past $1B.
Macrotrends
2021
📈
2021
The peak: ~$5B$5B
Pandemic home-upgrade spending lifts the Roomba maker's market value to about $5B.
Macrotrends
Aug 2022
Aug 2022
Amazon agrees to buy it for $1.7B$1.7B
A $61-a-share lifeline as sales sag and cheaper rivals swarm.
TechCrunch
Jan 2024
💔
Jan 2024
Amazon walks away — out of the club
The EU signals a veto and the deal dies; deep layoffs follow and co-founder Colin Angle steps down as CEO.
Reuters
2022–25
💬
From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2022–25
Glassdoor reviews described the Amazon deal as an all-or-nothing bet: when it collapsed, employees said roughly half the company was cut and the best engineers walked, and insiders had long faulted risk-averse leadership for falling behind cheaper Chinese rivals as the lineup dwindled toward rebadged supplier bots.
2025
2025
Going-concern warning
With cash tight and no buyer in sight, iRobot flags substantial doubt it can survive.
SEC filing
2026
🪦
2026
Files for bankruptcy — joins the Unitard Club 💔
With no rescue left, iRobot files for bankruptcy and agrees to sell itself to Chinese contract manufacturer Picea Robotics for a fraction of its former value.
TechCrunch
$4.9Bof peak value erased · 34 years
💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.
How it happened
iRobot created the consumer robot-vacuum category with the Roomba, its market value reaching about $5B in 2021. It agreed to a $1.7B Amazon takeover in 2022, but the deal was terminated in January 2024 after the EU signaled it would block it.
It issued a going-concern warning and, with no buyer, filed for bankruptcy — sold to Chinese contract manufacturer Picea Robotics for a fraction of its value.
Source: TechCrunch / SEC / FTC (peak market cap ~$5B 2021; Amazon $1.7B deal terminated Jan 2024 over EU antitrust; going-concern warning; filed bankruptcy and agreed to be acquired by Shenzhen Picea Robotics)
