iRobot, pioneer of domestic robotics and creator of the Roomba, has gone bankrupt and ends up in the hands of Piceaa Chinese manufacturer. It is not an isolated case but rather the symbol of a devastating trend in which Western companies develop technologies for decades and China ends up appropriating entire industries.
iRobot was founded in 1990 by three MIT researchers. It launched the first Roomba in 2002 and sold 50 million units. For two decades it dominated the robot vacuum cleaner market. In 2021 it was worth $3.5 billion. Today it is worth 140 million25 times less. Picea cancels its 264 million debt and keeps everything.
Why is it important. It’s not just about vacuum cleaners. Chinese manufacturers – Roborock, Ecovacs, Dreame, Xiaomi – already control almost 80% of the global robot vacuum cleaner market. With Picea purchasing iRobot, that figure is close to 95%. China not only manufactures cheaper: it now owns Western innovation that it previously only copied.
The pattern repeats:
- Volvo has been Chinese since 2010.
- Motorola too.
- Segway, the scooter that was going to revolutionize urban mobility, ended up in the hands of Ninebot.
- Lenovo bought IBM PC.
- Haier took over GE Appliances.
- Geely owns Lotus.
Western brands survive, but only as shells with Asian engineering inside.
Between the lines. Europe blocked Amazon’s purchase of iRobot in 2024 for fear that it would dominate the smart home. The result: the company was not independent, but ended up owned by its own Chinese manufacturer and creditor. European “protection of competition” resulted in iRobot falling into the hands of its foreign rivals.
iRobot outsourced its production to Vietnam to avoid Chinese tariffs, but Trump’s 46% tariffs on Vietnam cost it an extra $23 million in 2025. Meanwhile, Picea was simultaneously its manufacturer, its major creditor, and its indirect competitor. It didn’t even take a hostile takeover: just financial patience. He waited for iRobot will drown in debt and collected the remains.
The invisible cost of innovation. iRobot invested decades in R&D: military robotics, space robotics, domestic autonomous navigation… That research is expensive, slow and risky. Chinese manufacturers have not had to pay that cost. They just had to wait for the technology to mature, copy what worked, and improve execution.
The asymmetry is total. The West imposes antitrust restrictions on itself that slow domestic consolidations while Chinese companies operate with extensive state support, protected access to a domestic market of 1.4 billion consumers and regulatory scrutiny that cannot even be compared.
Europe has recently blocked other similar operations, such as that of Adobe and Figma either that of Broadcom and Qualcomm.
Yes, but. It is not about approving any acquisition without scrutiny, but about recognizing that blocking the purchase of Amazon has led to an objectively worse result: pioneering American technology that ends up in Chinese property. If you are truly concerned about Chinese companies dominating strategic sectors, this was a blunder with predictable consequences.
Western governments constantly talk about technological sovereignty and their willingness not to depend on China. But concrete actions are producing the opposite effect. Ultimately, the only thing the West loses is not its industry, it is ownership of its technological innovation.
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Featured image | Onur Binay
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