Why Roomba Died + Tech Predictions for 2026 + A Hard Forkin’ Xmas Song
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
It's your day to play.
It's your morning to make the most of.
It's your way to love.
It's your climate to consider.
It's your answer to what should I watch? It's your money to save.
It's your song to analyze line by line. It's your 10 ways to find a little calm. It's your world to understand.
The New York Times. Find out more at nytimes.com slash your world.
Casey, what's going on? Well, Kevin, I want to get ahead of something before you and all of our listeners read this in the tabloids. I did have to get rescued off a ride at Disneyland this past weekend. Yeah. Really? Yeah, we were over there at Tiana's Bayou Adventure. That's the recently rebranded Splash Mountain. And we were just about to go up the big hill and come down for the big splash when the ride broke down. And after 20 or 30 minutes, some very nice people came and walked us out of the Bayou Adventure through the sort of backstage area. And I won't say that it was scary, but there is something sort of embarrassing about having to be pulled off of a log flume.
Wait, you're not kidding. This is an actual thing that happened to you?
This is a real thing that happened to me. And this is part of the story of technology is that you can, you know, have suspended your disbelief and you think you're floating through a magical bayou adventure. But in reality, Kevin, the tech could break at any second and then you're going to have to get, you know, pulled off by a man with a hook in his arm.
Yeah, it sounds like instead of going on the bayou adventure, you almost went on the dayou adventure. Yes.
That is exactly right. I'm Kevin Roos, a tech columnist at the New York Times. I'm Casey Noon from Platformer. And this is Hard Fork. This week by robot, Roombot co-creator Colin Angle joins us to talk about why the iconic vacuum company went bankrupt. Then our 2026 tech predictions. And finally, we're going caroling. A hard fork in Christmas makes its annual return. Gloria, get my earplugs.
Well, Kevin, as we kick off the show this week, a legendary American company is entering an exciting new chapter. Unfortunately for them, it's chapter 11. What?
That's the bankruptcy chapter?
That's correct. On Sunday, iRobot, maker of the Roomba, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after finding itself out-competed by a bunch of Chinese fast-following companies. Yes.
So this is one of the longest-running robotics companies in the world. iRobot was started in 1990. The first Roomba came out several years after that. And it has been sort of synonymous with the whole category of the household robot vacuum. But as you mentioned, they have been running into some issues in recent years. You could say they've been bumping into walls. Yes. And in 2022, they had their biggest obstacle, their biggest wall, which is that it looked like iRobot was going to get acquired by Amazon immediately. Amazon made an offer to buy the company for $1.7 billion. But antitrust regulators in the U.S. and the EU stepped in and said, we don't like this and we're going to attempt to block it. That made the deal kind of fall apart.
And in 2024, they officially walked away and the company now is bankrupt.
They kind of zoomed away, you know.
Yeah.
Turn it around and scoot it away. And we should say, I think this is a fascinating story, not just about a company that made an iconic product and then fell on hard times, but of the complicated balancing acts and tradeoffs involved in regulating the American tech sector.
Yeah, and one of those trade-offs, Kevin, is that now iRobot will be owned by a Chinese company named Picea Robotics, which is its largest creditor and a competing design manufacturer. And there are now those who say, hey, this is actually a much worse outcome for us because now there is no longer an American company that is making a very popular household robot. And instead, this is one more category of manufacturing that we seem to be ceding to China. So all of that gives us a lot of good reason to talk to the founder and former CEO of iRobot, Colin Engel.
Yeah, Colin co-founded iRobot in 1990 after working at MIT's AI Laboratory and eventually went on to serve as CEO of the company for 33 years.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–12:50
2
Why did iRobot file for Chapter 11 and who is taking control?
12:50–36:17
3
How does Colin Angle explain the competitive threats from Chinese fast-followers?
36:17–48:04
4
Did Roomba’s choice of cameras over LiDAR cause its decline?
48:04–1:05:28
Speakers
6 identifiedMore from Hard Fork
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