Former iRobot CEO Colin Angle Reflects on Chapter 11 News

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There are a million lessons from every Chapter 11 filing, some more universally applicable than others. All are, of course, easier to litigate in hindsight. The struggles that preceded iRobot’s own announcement run the gamut. The global pandemic and its years-long knock-on effects almost certainly hastened and compounded many, while introducing entirely new challenges for the New England robotics firm. 

Any examination of iRobot’s 35-year history must first acknowledge the implausible nature of the company’s existence. “Lightning in a bottle” undersells it. For decades, it’s been held up as the sole exception to conventional wisdom around home robots. The garages of Silicon Valley are lined with the ghosts of exceptionally intelligent foolhardy folk who failed to crack the code.  

After years of robot projects that never quite took, iRobot finally stuck the landing with Roomba in 2002. The ragtag operation that no VC wanted to touch for years bested Electrolux, the Scandinavian appliance giant whose contemporary effort at a robot vacuum overshot the consumer market. As Roomba co-inventor Joseph Jones puts it in his recent book, Dancing with Roomba, “It’s unlikely anyone would have deliberately chosen the path we followed.”  

Common wisdom holds that somewhere in the neighborhood of 80-90% of startups fail in their first three years. That number jumps to 97% when zeroing in on hardware. As someone who has covered both that broad category and the subset of robots, I have to assume the platform gets even shorter when talking about the latter. By each of these metrics, iRobot is an extended success story. Here we are in 2025, still uncertain of the company’s ultimate fate.  

You wouldn’t know it by reading just about any coverage of iRobot over the past week, but Chapter 11 isn’t necessarily the end. It’s not an ideal outcome, or even a good one. It’s bad. It’s bankruptcy, and generally speaking, you would prefer not to be forced into a position where you have to declare it. But it doesn’t mean the buzzer’s buzzed and time is definitively up.  

That’s been the thrust of what current CEO, Gary Cohen, has said about the process up to this point.  

“For me, this restructuring process and its successful outcome is personal. I care about our employees, the Roomba brand, and our consumers,” he wrote last week on LinkedIn. “I am convinced — as is the entire leadership team at iRobot–– that we have taken an important and necessary step to help iRobot become a stronger, more focused company with a healthier financial foundation and a clear path to innovation and long-term growth. To be clear, it is business as usual at iRobot and our team will continue delivering continuity for our consumers, suppliers, and partners worldwide. I’m so proud to be part of this team and confident we’ll emerge from this process quickly and stronger than ever.” 

Interpret that — particularly the last bit — however you like. No one reading this reasonably expected the executive to go Chicken Little on the situation. As I’ve said (and repeat below), there’s nothing easy about the hand that he was dealt, and this could well be the best of several imperfect options. I look forward to discussing the strategy first-hand with Cohen soon.

iRobot’s board very clearly telegraphed its strategy with Cohen’s appointment. He’s a longtime executive, with experience in the consumer space. This is about maintaining market share, staying competitive, and, above all, selling Roombas. His predecessor, Colin Angle, is a roboticist by training. He, Helen Grenier, and Rodney Brooks were at MIT prior to cofounding the company — no doubt the reason why the early years appear to have been part company, part R&D lab. 

Angle stepped up and learned quickly. He admits to mistakes along the way — a part of essentially learning on the job. The fact that iRobot had already moved one million Roomba by 2004 was a major trial by fire. Angle says he hasn’t been in contact with Cohen since last year’s handover. He tells me he found out this recent bit of iRobot ownership news last weekend, along with the rest of us.   

These days he’s focused on his semi-stealth startup, Familiar Machines & Magic. The company is not building cleaning robots — or hardware at all.  Instead, Angle says, it’s focused on giving robots a sense of “how they’re doing,” in terms of completing tasks and otherwise interacting with humans.  

“The technology exists for a lot more awareness and understanding and based on that, you can actually imagine more sophisticated interactions with their owners, and incentivizing them to improve, and to incentivize that relationship to be more effective,” Angle tells me, tipping his hand ever so slightly with regard to his current work. “I think that's super interesting. When we think about how there's $5 trillion worth of value to be created in physical AI based on robots taking on much needed work in the home and in industry and in commercial and in the world, a huge percentage of that $5 trillion is not screwing in screws and toaster ovens in lights-out factories. It requires interacting with people.” 

Angle agreed to sit down for an upcoming episode of the Automated podcast. We spoke about a lot of things regarding iRobot and what he’s working on now. He largely insisted on not relitigating the past, though much like recent statements from cofounder, Grenier, has pointed at FTC and other regulatory scrutiny as a — if not the — key contributor to iRobot’s recent news.

You’ll be able to hear the full interview when the podcast runs. I’ve excerpted pieces below for the sake of relative brevity and so my colleagues can eventually leave work and celebrate the holidays with their families. 

What is your relationship with iRobot currently — if anything at all? 

It’s really not at all. About two years ago, when I stepped down as CEO of iRobot and then left the board, that team has a lot to do, and it was easiest for me to just do a full step away. So really, even my understanding of their strategy in the last year and a half is basically zero. I read the news like everybody else. 

You found out on Sunday with the rest of us. 

I found out on Sunday with the rest of us. On December 1, there was some other filings that sort of tipped the hand as far as where things were going. 

Did you give [Cohen] any advice during the transition? 

We definitely had a few conversations that were limited to just trying to make sure that he understood why I was leaving and my thoughts on things he should be worrying about or paying attention to. Really, it was one, two conversations. There was a lot going on and, Gary was eager and ready to jump right in. It felt like he knew what he wanted to do, and it was time for me, honestly, to go, step away and let him manage the ship. 

He wasn't handed an easy job. He was stepping into something pretty difficult. 

Absolutely. One of the reasons why we're chatting today is that the situation that led to that moment in time was one from which I think many should take a lesson and put some eyes against. Coming out of Covid and really looking at the situation that iRobot was in, the landscape had gotten much, much more competitive. What was happening in Europe, what was happening in Asia, was happening in the U.S., much less what had already happened in China was to the detriment of the market leadership that iRobot had traditionally enjoyed since we launched the product, way back in 2002. I was looking at our strategic plans, how do we diversify beyond being a single product company? What is our role in the home? All of these critically important questions required levels of investment that were stretched relative to the profitability of the company at the time. And so when Amazon called and really became clear that our long term strategy and Amazon's long term strategy was quite aligned, Amazon was willing to lean forward and make it something that really was in the best interest of, first and foremost, the customer. The innovation that it would have unlocked to create new ideas and bring them into the smart home was personally very exciting, and I think would have tremendously benefited the customer. The investor in iRobot would have gotten a good outcome.  

Was the Terra [lawnmower] an early casualty of supply chain issues?  

It was a difficult time. The shipping costs went up, double, tripled, quadrupled, and the first part of the pandemic, everything shut down. Then, the second part of the pandemic, we couldn't get parts. We were buying little tiny resistors that were supposed to cost five cents for $25 each, simply because we couldn't build product without them. For 17 years we had a great run, and then it seemed like the world was conspiring against the profitability of the company, and at the same time, we were looking to continue to innovate. It's why this, the Amazon deal made all the sense in the world for us to take the tremendous engineering talent, the vision that was aligned with what Amazon was trying to do. 

It took 18 months, and you couldn't have seen that coming. It was a confluence of things. Nobody knew exactly how the pandemic was going to play out — and in a lot of ways, is still playing out. The tariffs are still playing out. But do you think ultimately that there were just too many eggs in that Amazon basket for iRobot? 

I, certainly the board, believed that the Amazon deal was the best alternative, and once you commit yourself to the path, you're kind of committed to the path. We had agreed that we were going to do everything possible to preserve the assets that Amazon had acquired according to the terms of the deal. You’re supposed to again operate the business as if there is no deal subject to the terms of the operating company. Because Amazon bought a thing, you also have an obligation to preserve the value of the thing that Amazon bought. And typically, that works just fine. If the regulatory period is two or three months, four, six months — get to a year and a half, it's just hard. Particularly in a dynamic environment, and so that predictable and well communicated pain was being experienced as basically the maximum allowable time period to review a deal or drag on the review of a deal happened, and that was, that was hard.  

So, did we have too many eggs in the Amazon basket from the moment we signed the deal? That was the basket. It certainly was a case that when the deal was blocked 18 months later, after being frozen in time, you have no choice but saying, “okay, what do we need to do?” I give credit to the operating team after I departed for making hard choices to try to do everything in their power to revitalize and give the company a path forward. Honestly, entering bankruptcy is not the end. That's another step in a courageous and challenging mission to preserve as much of the value as possible. To some extent, that's not the core of the conversation. At least in my perspective, the core of the conversation is “why the hell did this not happen?” It wasn't because there was a monopolistic threat of abuse. In the European market, we had a 12.5% market share, which was declining. The number one market leader was in the market for only three years, and so it was nearly the perfect definition of a vibrant, competitive marketplace. 

Do you feel that the U.S. and E.U. were trying to use you as a sacrificial lamb? 

I would say that our situation was clearly communicated. That, in my judgment, and having been party to profound amount of research into market position, as well as the duties of the European Commission and the FTC in evaluating these types of deals, that the situation where somehow Amazon acquiring iRobot was going to create a monopolistic position contrary to the best interests and customers, was just not met. So everything else is speculation.  

You don't want to speculate on the specifics of why this specific deal was targeted. 

I think that the chairman of FTC was very outspoken as to concerns and objections, and they had less to do with iRobot and more to do with the acquiring company. You can look at the market conditions. iRobot had significant decline,  and the significant raise and increase in market share going to other new companies entering the market. It does not take much of an economics degree to ask yourself, “are these the hallmarks of an anti-competitive monopolistic position?” Clearly not. And so again, it leads to, “okay, so why did this happen? And did the right thing happen?” And, you know, I am not Lina Khan. I don't want to play thought police, but I can say with great conviction, it had nothing to do with iRobot market position in both the North America and the European marketplaces, because the facts don't fit.