There’s something liberating about talking to someone who doesn’t have to defend decisions they didn’t make. Gary Cohen He came to iRobot in 2024 to be its CEO when the founder, Colin Angle, He jumped ship after the collapse of the deal with Amazon.
Now, more than a year later, from an office in Bedford where he has just renewed his lease – a gesture of permanence in the midst of chaos – he has spoken to Xataka with the frankness of who has had to choose between dignified death and pragmatic survival.
“My goal is to make Colin proud,” he says of the departed founder. “He calls it ‘his baby.’ I want to make him feel like we were able to turn this company around.”
It’s a curious statement coming from who just sold that baby to Picea Roboticsthe Chinese manufacturer that will now own the company that invented the home robot vacuum cleaner.
Dead in the closet
At one point in the conversation, Cohen drops an image that sticks: “I have hundreds of dead lawnmower robots in this building.” It refers to Terra project, iRobot’s failed attempt to expand beyond vacuum cleaners. These technological corpses are the perfect metaphor for a company that was ahead of the market… but did not know how to convert that advantage into products that arrived on time.
Original sin was go all in on elegant but impractical technology. Colin Angle, a brilliant roboticist at MIT, insisted on camera-based navigation as Chinese competitors adopted LiDAR. Exactly the same as Tesla’s approach to Chinese cars, by the way.
“Consumers want to map their homes in twenty minutes, not two hours,” Cohen explains with the wisdom of someone who comes from selling razors at Gillette, not robots.
Two hundred software engineers worked at Machine Learning to make that vision work. Meanwhile, companies like Ecovacs or Roborock were overtaking them from the right with cheaper products and, to iRobot’s pain, technologically superior according to many customers.
“During the period with Amazon, the management team took its foot off the gas and we didn’t bring innovation to market for about 18 months.” This confession about the 18 months of paralysis while they waited the approval of the sale to Amazon for 1.7 billion It’s devastating. The company was frozen, unable to react as the market moved at Chinese speed. It was not until the last year, already working with Picea, when iRobot incorporated LiDAR into its range.
When European regulators ended up blocking the operation to “protect competition,” anddestiny was sealed. The irony hurts: those European regulators prevented an American company from buying another American company, and the result is that it has ended up being absorbed by a Chinese company that played its cards well.
When I point out this paradox, Cohen responds cautiously and diplomatically: “This was not a hostile takeover. We went to them.”
The creditor’s embrace
The relationship with Picea began like many dependency relationships: out of necessity.
- iRobot I owed them 161 million in manufacturing costs when Cohen took over.
- They needed to completely reinvent themselves, and they needed to do it quickly.
- In less than a year they launched eight new models“finally giving the people what they wanted, including LiDAR navigation and scrubbing combo products.”
But the final blow came from the tariffs. 46% on imports from Vietnamwhere they manufacture for the US market. $23 million extra in costs in 2025 alone. “Some potential buyers looked at our business and said ‘we don’t want to take risks until the tariff situation is resolved.'” The candidates evaporated one by one.
When the last potential buyer couldn’t close the deal, Cohen made the pragmatic decision. “We told Picea: you have a great partnership with us, why don’t you buy from us?” And in one month they closed the deal that turns the supplier, creditor and competitor, all in onein owner.
The promise of continuity
“Is business as usual. iRobot is here to stay. “We don’t expect any disruption.” Cohen insists Roombas will continue to work, apps will maintain their service and support will continue.
For the millions of users (in Spain, where “Roomba” has become as synonymous with a robot vacuum cleaner as “Kleenex” is with a handkerchief) this is the only thing that matters.
The offices will remain: Bedford, Tokyo, Madrid, London. Or so the CEO claims. The MIT engineers who form the ‘iRobot Labs’ will continue working.
“We have intellectual property that we contribute. They have patents. Together we will be able to differentiate products much more.” The official narrative is optimistic because think about the perfect marriage between American innovation and Chinese efficiency.
But when I ask how much of the new product line was actually developed by iRobot, the answer says a lot without saying, “It’s been a partnership.” The most innovative features, such as the compactor container wave retractable scrub roller coverwere developed by Picea.
The value of being late
“You have to treat every day as if you were second or third, not as if you were first.” It is the advice that Cohen would give to technology entrepreneurs, born from his experience at Gillette when they had 60% of the market but acted as challengers.
At some point, iRobot forgot that lesson between its IPO in 2005 and its forced sale for a fraction of its peak value.
“My goal,” Cohen says near the end, “is to make customers like your mother happy.” You are referring to my comment about how difficult it was for my mother to set up her Roomba. It’s a modest promise for a company that dreamed of revolutionizing domestic robotics, but maybe realism is exactly what they need now.
There is something moving about Cohen defending a company he didn’t build, trying to save half a thousand jobs, promising to honor the legacy of a founder who is no longer here. “Colin was a visionary,” he says, then honestly adds that they couldn’t execute that vision.
The future has a Chinese accent
The story Cohen tells is not one of defeat, but of pragmatic survival. iRobot will live, yes, but it will be a different life. Time will tell how better or worse. The pioneers of the robot vacuum cleaner now belong to those who knew how to copy and improve them best, not to those who bore the weight of decades of R&D.
“They’re going to own a multibillion-dollar global brand,” Cohen says of what Picea is buying. Not only manufacturing capacity, but the prestige of a name that in many countries became a category. It is an asset that, although it now has a bitter aftertaste, is still valuable.
The conversation ends with a reflection on the coming humanoid robots (“which have not been marketed either, by the way,” he adds ironically) and the possibility that Terra, the robotic lawnmower, will be resurrected one day. They are modest hopes, appropriate for a company that has learned that inventing the future does not guarantee owning it.
deep downthe story of iRobot is a reminder that in technological capitalism, pride is a luxury few can afford. Sometimes surviving means accepting that your former suppliers become your new owners.
It’s a lesson that Silicon Valley watches with trepidation as Chinese technology advances, as relentless as it is pragmatic, buying the dreams that others can no longer finance.
Featured image | iRobot, Xataka
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