The rise and fall of iRobot

Business

As iRobot faces uncertainty about its future, experts say its disappearance could leave a hole in the robotics industry.

It was a stunning turn of events when iRobot canceled its fourth quarter meeting in March, saying the company has had “substantial doubt” about its ability to stay afloat. 

It was a far cry from the glory days of the Bedford, Massachusetts-based operation, when it transformed itself from a defense company to the first of its kind consumer robot company, with its creation of the at-home vacuum cleaner, the Roomba. 

“If you look back at iconic robots, which ones would you pick?” asked Hanumant Singh, director of the Master of Science in Robotics program at Northeastern. “Most people, when they think about iconic robots, think of something that came in a sci-fi movie,” such as R2-D2 or Star Trek’s Data.

He continued, “But if you think about the iconic robots that went into someone’s house, I would say the Roomba would be close to the top of the list.”

The turn of events began in January when Amazon announced it wouldn’t be acquiring iRobot after facing regulatory scrutiny and opposition from European and U.S. antitrust regulators, who raised concerns over competition issues. 

Despite introducing a new lineup of robot vacuums and mops that hit the market on March 18, the company canceled its fourth quarter meeting, citing doubts that it can continue past the end of the fiscal year. 

“There can be no assurance that the new product launches will be successful,” the release said. 

iRobot also disclosed that it had reduced its headcount by more than 50% from 2023, to 541. Even so, the company’s December 2024 annual report said the total revenue, $681.8 million, was down 23.4% from the previous year. 

The company’s report also stated that it expects to “incur operating losses for the foreseeable future” and may not become profitable, incurring substantial losses due to less product demand, increased competition, and macroeconomic conditions, such as tariffs. 

During the fourth quarter announcement, the company did not provide a 2025 outlook and stated it has no timeline for the board to do a review. 

iRobot was the first of its kind 

iRobot was founded in 1990 by three MIT roboticists, Colin Angle, Helen Greiner, and Rodney Brooks, when the robotics industry was still in its infancy. 

iRobot’s origins were in defense work. Singh said one of the biggest challenges of the Iraq War was mine-countering measures. The company’s first robot, Ariel, walked like a crab and could withstand strong waves.

At the time, Singh explained, the only alternative was a torpedo-shaped robot that wasn’t very effective, making Greiner’s innovation a “big, big deal.”

Singh noted that the startup struggled early on, and it wasn’t until the Roomba launched that “everything came together.”

David Barnett, senior fiscal officer at the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT and iRobot’s 22nd employee, said the Roomba was a “happy accident,” after a project in industrial floor cleaning robots never met the market. 

Seeing a product resembling a “frisbee with wheels,” the company wondered if there was an opportunity in the consumer marketplace, a path no other robotics company had made.

“(iRobot) was a unicorn,” said Barnett. “But it demonstrated that the robot could make money for the first time.” 

Tom Ryden, CEO of Mass Robotics and a former company employee in its early days, said the company grew and became the dominant player in the field when no one else was. 

“iRobot was inspirational because they were the first ones to go out and do something like this,” said Ryden. 

Because no other company was developing at-home robots like iRobot, the company could bring in the “best of the best,” and “they did,” Ryden said. The company grew; over time, many employees left and created their own startups. 

There are people from the company in high levels and positions at places like Boston Dynamics, Rise Robotics, and Oxipital, and this trend continues with a new startup called P!NG, one of whose co-founders came out of iRobot. 

“All of these companies, some of those guys got their start at iRobot,” said Ryden. 

However, over time, technology has become more of a commodity. Some players in China have come out with cheaper systems, so the “competition got very stiff,” he said. 

When the Chinese entered the autonomous robot business, Singh said it was challenging to compete with them in terms of price. 

Then there was the proposed acquisition by Amazon, said Singh. “When that didn’t happen, that was the death.”

A ‘big hole’ in the robotics industry

If iRobot were to fail, Ryden said it would leave a big hole in the state’s robotics industry. 

“It’s great to have a leading robotics company here in the state of Massachusetts,” said Ryden. “It draws people, it draws talent, draws excitement, and that helps the robotics community as a whole.”

Ryden said the failure of Amazon to acquire the company was disappointing. 

“But I think we need to be aware of this technology and what it can do and can’t do,” said Ryden. “I think there was a concern that the knowledge that the Roomba would gather from moving around the home would be shared to Amazon, and that’s a problem.”

But now “folks are buying Chinese robots that are gathering that same data and sending it to China. So we’re actually worse off than if Amazon bought them.”

He hopes another company will step in and that the U.S. will continue to see developments in the industry. 

Barnett said the robotics industry has changed a lot since the ’90s. 

“The robots that were your grandparents’ dreams 30 years ago are now commonplace,” Barnett said. 

iRobot has built up a community of industrial roboticists, Singh said, and one of its most significant legacies is that the people who work there make fundamental differences in the world. 

“There’s a huge, big difference between doing the theory, writing a paper about it, doing some experiments … and then pushing out relatively low-cost product that works on an application that matters to people in their homes,” said Singh. “That’s big.”

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Beth Treffeisen is a general assignment reporter for Boston.com, focusing on local news, crime, and business in the New England region.