Apple-marketed robotics firm Anki goes into shutdown mode
Anki -- a robotics company once heavily promoted by Apple -- is shutting down on Wednesday, forcing nearly 200 people out of work.
Anki CEO Boris Sofman informed staff of the impending shutdown in a meeting on Monday, reports Recode. Sources familiar with the matter said employees will be paid a week of severance.
The maker of Overdrive, Cosmo and Vector robots was reportedly in dire straits after a recent financing deal fell through in the eleventh hour, the report said. Details of the funding round were not made available, but the agreement was apparently imperative to the company's future. Sources said Sofman informed employees of the lost funding only days prior to Monday's announcement, suggesting the deal was critical to keep Anki afloat.
"Despite our past successes, we pursued every financial avenue to fund our future product development and expand on our platforms," an Anki spokesperson said. "A significant financial deal at a late stage fell through with a strategic investor and we were not able to reach an agreement. We're doing our best to take care of every single employee and their families, and our management team continues to explore all options available."
Anki said it had approached $100 million in revenue during 2017, and expected to top that in 2018. The company had been fueled by over $200 million in venture capital funding, including from Andreessen Horowitz, whose co-founder Marc Andreessen briefly held a position on Anki's board. Top Anki executives reportedly claimed takeover interest from giants like Amazon, Comcast and Microsoft, but an acquisition failed to materialize.
The attention around Anki otherwise stems from its founders -- roboticists from Carnegie Mellon -- and a 2013 stage demo at an Apple press event. There, the company showed off Anki Drive, an AI-equipped remote control car racing game.
Its product line never really evolved beyond phone- and tablet-connected toys, however, even as it tried to become a full-fledged robotics business. Multiple consumer robotics companies have shut down in recent times as well, likely triggering investor skepticism.
Anki CEO Boris Sofman informed staff of the impending shutdown in a meeting on Monday, reports Recode. Sources familiar with the matter said employees will be paid a week of severance.
The maker of Overdrive, Cosmo and Vector robots was reportedly in dire straits after a recent financing deal fell through in the eleventh hour, the report said. Details of the funding round were not made available, but the agreement was apparently imperative to the company's future. Sources said Sofman informed employees of the lost funding only days prior to Monday's announcement, suggesting the deal was critical to keep Anki afloat.
"Despite our past successes, we pursued every financial avenue to fund our future product development and expand on our platforms," an Anki spokesperson said. "A significant financial deal at a late stage fell through with a strategic investor and we were not able to reach an agreement. We're doing our best to take care of every single employee and their families, and our management team continues to explore all options available."
Anki said it had approached $100 million in revenue during 2017, and expected to top that in 2018. The company had been fueled by over $200 million in venture capital funding, including from Andreessen Horowitz, whose co-founder Marc Andreessen briefly held a position on Anki's board. Top Anki executives reportedly claimed takeover interest from giants like Amazon, Comcast and Microsoft, but an acquisition failed to materialize.
The attention around Anki otherwise stems from its founders -- roboticists from Carnegie Mellon -- and a 2013 stage demo at an Apple press event. There, the company showed off Anki Drive, an AI-equipped remote control car racing game.
Its product line never really evolved beyond phone- and tablet-connected toys, however, even as it tried to become a full-fledged robotics business. Multiple consumer robotics companies have shut down in recent times as well, likely triggering investor skepticism.
Comments
Times are turbulent right now and being a hardware vendor is very tough. Even the services are moving quickly. YouTube TV has gone 35 bucks a month to over 50. ATT is saying that can't make money unless DirecTV Now is 50 a month.
Netflix is now 16 dollars a month for 4K streaming. I've got my Cox hardware in a box right now on my way to cut Cable. I'm finding it easier to just wait for deals on TV shows and buy them on iTunes. I just bought Stargate Atlantis all seasons for 19.99.
The programming tools are a lot of fun.
It's surprisingly sophisticated for the price, and no subscription.
Take smart speakers for example - these only exist because they're part of a larger strategy by companies with significant financial resources and a lot of existing AI technology for quick deployment.
In Australia, Anki Overdrive took way too long to get over here and when it finally did we got the "Fast & Furious" licenced pack which I know I was never interested in.
In essence it was a beefed up slot-car set targeting the tech generation. That is going to be a pretty small market, I can count on one hand the number of colleagues I spoke to about it who were interested in it. And, not a single one of us actually did buy it.
I think they really needed a couple of things.
1. A selection of cars and a base frame kit to allow slot-car enthusiasts to buy into the concept (it did have a number of advantages over the more expensive digital slot car systems but car model range was not it)
2. A cheap entry path to allow parents to consider the set as a suitable racing car set. This might even mean providing a controller outside of the App for kids without phones / iPods.
Sure, they would never have been able to complete with the $22 cheap sets available. But, targeted right I would have expected them to grab a good slice of the $200+ level sets and into the even more expensive digital sets targeting the slot-car enthusiasts.
Besides toys and novelty robots, is there any kind of robot that doesn't cost a fortune and that is actually useful?
And I'm not just talking about the company described in the OP, I don't know much about them, I'm talking about all robotics in general.
In my opinion, robotics for consumer use is still something that is quite a few years away.
Will we ever see something like Rosie from the Jetsons in our lifetimes, and will it actually be in our homes?