iRobot Crashes After Filing For Bankruptcy, Chinese Owner Emerges

Some of us may be old enough to remember when iRobot released its first robot vacuum, the Roomba, in 2002. Nearly 25 years later, the company has ceased to exist, collapsing into bankruptcy, with its remaining assets and intellectual property set to be acquired by a Chinese competitor.

How did iRobot implode, only for a Chinese company to end up cleaning American homes?

It began when European Union competition regulators blocked Amazon’s proposed takeover of iRobot, cutting off what some Wall Street analysts saw as the company’s last realistic path to survival. It is also worth noting that the Biden administration’s FTC Chair, Lina Khan, was aligned with the EU’s position.

A prior Lina Khan special?

Encouraging the DOJ to block JetBlue from buying Spirit.

Spirit has subsequently filed for bankruptcy TWICE in the just over two years since then. https://t.co/HHLmRK7acX

— Compound248 (@compound248) December 15, 2025

Founded in 1990 by MIT engineers, iRobot rose to prominence in the early 2000s with the Roomba. Now, the company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and agreed to hand control to its leading Chinese supplier, Shenzhen PICEA Robotics, under a court-supervised process in Delaware.

Peering into Shenzhen PICEA Robotics’ latest supply chain. By the way, it has links to companies with “forced labor” risks. This data was generated by the supply chain risk analysis company Sayari.

In New York, iRobot’s shares crashed 68% in premarket trading.

Bankruptcy filings show estimated assets of $100 million to $500 million, with liabilities in the same range.

iRobot said operations will continue without disruption, including its app, customer programs, global partners, supply chain relationships, and product support.

Thanks to the reckless EU regulators and Biden-era mismanagement, America’s iRobot will now be owned by the Chinese and likely present security risks.