Roomba maker iRobot gets cleaned out in Chapter 11

iRobot, the company behind autonomous vacuum cleaner brand Roomba, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, telling investors that its Chinese manufacturer will assume control going forward. The business entered Chapter 11 proceedings on Sunday and initiated a restructuring support agreement (RSA) that would see …

[Doctor Syntax]

"Picea Robotics"

That should spruce things up.

[Paul Herber]

Do we pre-fir fish puns or tree puns?

[Doctor Syntax]

Fir puns will be kept in abiesance.

[An_Old_Dog]

"iRobit"

Operations will run as usual throughout the Chapter 11 process, as well as meeting its financial commitments to staff, vendors, and creditors, iRobit said in a statement.

Branching out into Ransomware-as-a-Service?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "iRobit"

"Nice carpet you have there. It'd be a pity if the vacuum parked itself in one spot and wore a hole in it. For a small fee, I know a guy who can prevent it..."

[KittenHuffer]

That sucks!

[herman]

Nothing sucks like Electrolux.

[Snake]

RE: Electrolux

There's a complete shame in the Electrolux story, a company cheapening its wares so much that they knocked themselves completely out of the market. I have 3 of the last Electrolux vacuums made and while I love my two Silent Performer-series canisters I hate their cheap attachments, which give glass a run for title of "lack of durability". When the motorized power nozzle on one broke while still in warranty...they sent me an ENTIRE new vacuum, packed and sealed in the retail box with all attachments.

Nice way to kill your customer loyalty *and* your bottom line, guys. No wonder you closed up shop and left that market.

[Mimsey Borogove]

Re: RE: Electrolux

There's a complete shame in the Electrolux story, a company cheapening its wares so much that they knocked themselves completely out of the market.

They were into enshittification before enshittification was cool.

[VicMortimer]

Spyware

Pretty sure it wasn't "consumer confidence" that made people stop buying their crap.

It was the spying.

A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook?"

[steelpillow]

Re: Spyware

> It was the spying.

So, expect i-Rob-it-on-sight to announce a bulk sale of Roombas to Trump's White House in the near future.

[DarkwavePunk]

Re: Spyware

My main problem with these robot vacuum cleaners is that your house/room has to be so clean and tidy for them to actually work that a bit of manual sweeping is trivial. Totally negates any advantage.

[VicMortimer]

Re: Spyware

Yep. I actually have one of the older ones that didn't have any kind of network connection. I haven't used it in many years. It was not terribly useful.

[Snake]

Re: Spyware

I personally think it is the cost: Roomba's were high priced, for quite a while, compared to the competition that has come out since iRobot's early years. A few years ago you couldn't really touch a good Roomba for much under $300 while the other Chinese brands were mostly a fraction of that. iRobot has dropped their prices I see, but I don't think that undoes years of damage from overpriced products with, based upon these feedbacks, weren't actually worth that level of investment.

[DS999]

Re: Spyware

They also don't have enough suction to be very useful on carpet. Fine for hardwood or tile floors but even if you have all hard surface flooring you often cover parts of it with rugs and good luck getting a Roomba or similar to suck more than a token amount of pet hair out of that (or not to get stuck if said pet has folded up one of the rug's edges/corners)

My girlfriend got one of these from her sister for Christmas a few years ago, and she ended up returning/exchanging it because she felt like she was spending more time dealing with the Roomba than it took to sweep/vacuum herself!

Can't even imagine trying to have one of those in a home with a toddler, given how pet toys left lying around are already a challenge for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Spyware

Probably you need to clean a little more often.... or buy a bulldozer....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Spyware

No suprise Amazon wanted them - something the article overlooks - not that a Chinese owner is better - just they were already building them.

[vtcodger]

Easy technical fix overlooked

Clearly Roomba needs AI and/or Blockchain and/or quantum computing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Easy technical fix overlooked

I believe it needs 'Agentic AI' - that seems to be the latest bullshit buzzword!

[DS999]

Re: Easy technical fix overlooked

Well if it was able to recognize poop or mud and not make the mess worse that would be a good use of AI!

[Adrian The Alchemist]

Re: Easy technical fix overlooked

Don't forget NFT's they really need to be non fungable

[Brave Coward]

Re: Easy technical fix overlooked

... but they already are 'agile'.

Or was that 'fragile'?

[james 68]

When you can buy an equivalent of their "high end" model for 1/4 of the price, of course they're gonna lose the robo-rat race. The days of them being the only purveyors in the game are long gone but they still believe they can (over)charge a premium for nothing that can't be bought elsewhere for a fraction of the price.

Dyson are the same, and will likely follow suit.

[werdsmith]

Dyson have a robotic floor cleaner in the pipeline.

The poor company halved their profit in 2024, only made half a billion quid.

[Snake]

RE: profit

I guess when the price of the cheapest colored plastic accents you can buy doubles, your profits halve. Oh well.

[Captain Hogwash]

They have had for more than a decade.

[Richard 31]

Cleaning

They were screwed ever since that photo of irobot employee manually cleaning the store came out.

[ajadedcynicaloldfart]

Re: Cleaning

@Richard 31

Please tell me that "manually cleaning the store came out" is a wonderful euphemism for having a dump!

And if it wasn't it sure as hell is now.

[trevorde]

Best reason to not buy a Roomba

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/15/roomba-robot-vacuum-poopocalypse-facebook-post

or any other robo-vac

[Annihilator]

Re: Best reason to not buy a Roomba

There's plenty of reasons not to buy one, but I remember thinking at the time people outraged that it didn't deal with literal shit on the floor properly were probably expecting a bit too much for a robotic vacuum cleaner.

"I can't believe my robot vacuum cleaner just smeared that turd I left on the carpet across the rest of the house!" Really? I can. And I'm not really blaming the robot for that outcome...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Best reason to not buy a Roomba

If you rearrange the letters in "Roomba" you get "A broom", which is probably a better long-term investment.

[Empire of the Pussycat]

But what will the cats do without Roomba?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk4XB2wZqF4

[spireite]

The investors are screaming, but they cannot be heard........

.... they are in a vacuum

*boom boom tsk^^

[Joe Gurman]

Aaaaand….

….you’ll be here all week, right?

[Adrian The Alchemist]

In Space..

...Nobody can hear you clean!

[Ossi]

Owned one once. It didn't clean very well, slowing damaged the corners of the skirting boards and door frames as its only way of knowing that there was a wall there was by crashing into it and then broke down after less than 2 years. And they try to charge premium prices for this crap.

[Dorian]

Le marché s’est banalisé, les prix non. Forcément ça finit par coincer

[Anonymous Coward]

I was gifted a dumb, cheap, self-propelled cleaner. It had little obvious utility and also spent most of its life circling the drain.

[Anonymous Coward]

... and you eventually married her anyway??

[Blackjack]

Hope you guys only use the offline models.

[Dwarf]

20 million people are about to discover what a mains powered, non-cloud enabled vacumn cleaner has over the soon to be useless paperweight.

[Winkypop]

It’s a feline takeover

Big Cat has bought the company out.

Pretty soon you’ll see Cat Commanders everywhere riding their Roombas into battle!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that sucks.

[Ken Shabby]

Sucks so badly