The company is set to be acquired by Picea Robotics, a Shenzhen-based firm that has both supplied and competed with iRobot. Founded in 1990 by engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), iRobot helped popularize home robotics with the launch of the Roomba vacuum in 2002, becoming a household name in autonomous cleaning devices. A proposed takeover by Amazon was blocked by EU competition regulators in 2023. The bankruptcy filing marks a dramatic turn for the once-dominant brand.