Robotics manufacturer Anki shuts down #makerbusiness
Anki was founded in 2010 and launched its first product in 2013. It generated a lot of buzz over the past decade and received multiple cash injections totaling over $200 million. This all culminated in 2018 with its launch of Vector, the cute little robot shown in the video above.
According to an article over at Vox, Anki was close to reaching $100 million in revenue in 2017 and their Kickstarter in 2018 pulled in $1.8 million. But it seems even with all the capital, and all sales, it still wasn’t enough to keep Anki’s lights on.
For a company thats able to pull in $200 million funding, opening Kickstarter to raise $500,000 raises some red flags. The need to crowdfund for marginal capital is bad news, and even if its intended to be used to gauge public interest —well lets just say it’d be ideal for a 10 year old company to have a good pulse on its market.
Then late last year an article in Crunchbase opened the possibility of serious capital troubles.
For its part, Anki’s most recent venture round was a Series D, which ultimately secured roughly $77.5 million for the company, according to its SEC filing. However, the new equity round was not labeled “Series E,” as would be expected.
Labeling this venture round a “Series 1” indicates the company has potentially recapitalized.
Crunchbase News covered another “Series 1” round in the past, which Teespring raised during the course of its recapitalization. In that transaction, Teespring’s existing preferred shareholders were crammed down into a new class as it issued a new class of preferred shares and wrote down the value of common stockholders to zero. That is definitely a worst-case scenario and probably not what happened with Anki, assuming the company’s stated revenue (again, supposedly exceeding $100 million in 2018) is correct.
It’s not clear exactly what happened, but whatever took place between then and now, Anki wasn’t able to secure a much needed windfall and had to shutter its operations. $100 million in sales is really a remarkable achievement, and its unfortunate that they couldn’t make it profitable, or convince others that one day it might be.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: New Python Releases, an ESP32+MicroPython IDE and Much More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
