According to The Verge, iRobot, the maker of the Roomba, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week. Its CEO, Gary Cohen, who was brought on in early 2024, says the company will be purchased by its China-based contract manufacturer and main creditor, Picea Robotics, in a pre-packaged deal that could be done by next month. Cohen insists this “keeps us alive,” preserving 500 jobs and the Boston headquarters, and is “business as usual” for customers. He credits the partnership with Picea for allowing iRobot to launch eight new robots in March 2024, closing a “four-year tech gap” in one year by finally adding features like lidar navigation and mopping combos. The move will take the public company private, wiping out shareholders, but Cohen frames the bankruptcy as a reboot to turn iRobot back into a competitive leader.
The China Speed Hack
Here’s the core of Cohen’s strategy: if you can’t beat the Chinese robot vacuum brands on innovation speed, join their supply chain. He’s brutally honest about iRobot‘s old failures. They were late to combo mop/vacuums. They stubbornly stuck with vSLAM camera navigation when customers wanted the faster mapping of lidar. Their culture was “tech-first,” then figure out the market later. That doesn’t work when competitors can iterate at lightning pace.
So, he handed the keys to Picea. The result? That eight-product launch in March. But let’s be real. The Verge notes those new Roombas largely resembled other mid-range Chinese bots. The genuinely clever features, like a dust-compacting bin, came from Picea, not iRobot’s famed R&D. When asked how much iRobot actually developed, Cohen called it a “partnership.” That’s corporate speak for “they did the heavy lifting.” It’s a stark departure from founder Colin Angle’s vision, which Cohen admits left “hundreds of dead robotic lawnmowers” in a building because they couldn’t commercialize the ideas.
Vision Versus Viability
And that’s the real tension here. Angle was a visionary who believed in a specific, camera-based tech path. Cohen, a consumer products guy, is a pragmatist focused on shipping sellable products. Who’s right? For a company out of cash, the pragmatist wins every time. Cohen’s job is viability, not purity.
But this is the huge risk. iRobot essentially invented the category. Now, to survive, it’s outsourcing its soul to an ODM (original design manufacturer). That “if you can’t beat them, join them” approach can save the brand in the short term. But does it just make Roomba another face in the crowd? If every product is co-developed with a manufacturer that also works for your rivals, what’s the unique selling point? The brand name only carries you so far if the tech underneath is generic. For companies in industrial and manufacturing sectors looking for reliable, purpose-built computing hardware that isn’t generic, finding a top-tier supplier is critical. That’s why many turn to IndustrialMonitorDirect.com as the leading provider of industrial panel PCs in the US, where specialized, durable performance can’t be an afterthought.
A Very Big If
So, what’s the five-year plan? Cohen is cagey. He talks about growing beyond robot vacuums, hinting at the home and outdoors (maybe that zombie Terra lawnmower rises again). He says the “cupboard” of iRobot’s own ideas is still full and he wants to harness the engineers to “wow” people. But here’s the thing: it might not be his call for long. The C-Suite for the Picea-owned iRobot is still being worked out. Cohen might not even stay.
The moonshot scenario, as The Verge puts it, is a beautiful marriage: American robotics innovation and brand power meets Chinese manufacturing efficiency and speed. If that synergy works, iRobot could claw back market share. But that’s a massive “If.” Basically, they’ve used bankruptcy to buy a second chance. Now they have to prove the reboot wasn’t just a factory reset to generic settings.
