- General
- April 30, 2019
- 5 minutes read
Vector Maker Anki Shuts Down
Anki CEO Boris Sofman image: TechCrunch / Flickr Anki, the San Francisco based robotics startup behind popular consumer robots like Vector…
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| Anki CEO Boris Sofman
image: TechCrunch / Flickr
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Anki, the San Francisco based robotics startup behind popular consumer robots like Vector and Anki and backed by nearly $200 million in funding according to Crunchbase data is shutting its doors and laying off its entire staff. Recode first reported this on Monday. According to its report, CEO Boris Sofman — at a teary all-hands meeting – told Anki’s staff (close to 200 employees) that they would be terminated on Wednesday and paid a week of severance.
The report also says Sofman had earlier told employees that the company was scrambling to find more funding after a new financing round receded at the last minute. This isn’t a small shut-down as Anki said last fall it had “approached” $100 million in 2017 revenue and expected to surpass that figure in 2018. Anki’s leadership had previously told employees that it was looking after acquisition interest from companies like Comcast, Microsoft, and Amazon.
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| Anki’s Vector
image: Anki
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Anki’s consumer robots like Vector and Cozmo saw high sales, with Cozmo having earned the top spot for the best-selling toy on Amazon U.S. two years in a row and also the best-selling toy of 2017 on Amazon in the U.K. and France according to One Click Retail. Anki has sold more than 1.5 million of its robots in total.
The company was founded in 2010 by three Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute alumni. It raised funding from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, JP Morgan Chase, Silicon Valley Ventures, and C4 Ventures.
