Anki, the company that created Vector and Cozmo, is shutting down

We are sad to receive the news of the Anki the company behind the robot Cozmo and Vector is shutting down and laying off of all the 200 emplyees.

The company said in a statement that it was left “without significant funding to support a hardware and software business and bridge to our long-term product roadmap.”

“Despite our past successes, we pursued every financial avenue to fund our future product development and expand on our platforms,” a company spokesperson said. “A significant financial deal at a late stage fell through with a strategic investor and we were not able to reach an agreement. We’re doing our best to take care of every single employee and their families, and our management team continues to explore all options available.”

Source : The Verge

The owners of the small desk robots received the news from their Cozmo and Vector unit directly.

We don’t know yet what will happen after the official shutting down today and if the robots will continue to works after but the hopes are high in the release of the source code to the opensource community so everyone can benefit from it.

The correlation between a robot and the company that built it is too strong in the consumer sphere. Switching to OpenSource can be the answer to this problem.

Our suggestion is to have a look to the opensource community and amazing project like OpenCat robotic kitten, OTTODIY robot, Vorpal opensource hexapod!