Social robot company Jibo is sadly running on fumes after burning through nearly $73 million in funding. In a story first reported by BostInno and

Jibo social robot: where things went wrong

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2021-07-12 18:00:05

Social robot company Jibo is sadly running on fumes after burning through nearly $73 million in funding. In a story first reported by BostInno and since confirmed by The Robot Report, Jibo has laid off the majority of its workforce to enable “additional time to secure additional funding or pursue an exit.”

Jibo was once heralded as “the first social robot for the home.” Founded in 2012 by famed MIT roboticist Cynthia Breazeal, Jibo successfully raised over $3.5 million when its Indiegogo campaign ended in 2014. At the time, Breazeal promised to usher in a new age of social robotics.

“The way that the personal robots revolution is going to really happen is by making it a platform. Because once you do that, suddenly you can have a robot that can do many things for you, for many different people, versus these niche robots that only vacuum or only clean your gutter.”

In Breazeal’s mind, Jibo was indeed that platform. Jibo was even recently endorsed by Time Magazine as one of the best innovations of 2017.

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