
Robotics company Anki shuts down - tachion
https://www.macrumors.com/2019/04/29/anki-robotics-company-shutting-down/
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johnwyles
> Anki CEO Boris Sofman today told all Anki staff that they would be
> terminated on Wednesday and would be given a week of severance pay. Anki has
> nearly 200 employees.

If that is true this is truly abhorrent and grossly irresponsible towards
those employees. Is there more to this story because that is simply awful and
I feel bad for those employees and their families with such a short notice?

> Just days ago, employees were told that Anki was aiming to find additional
> funding after a round of financing fell through.

Guess it didn't happen. This is just sad. I imagine those employees and their
families have been through some high highs and now low lows. Hopefully enough
of them saw the writing on the wall so they could land themselves elsewhere
with little disruption.

I really liked their Cozmo product and have bought two myself. I found it
incredibly creative and was hoping for more innovative products from them in
the future. It shoved a lot of very clever things into a fairly decently
priced product but sadly I think the $150-200 and not sub-$100 price tag
prevented a bigger market(?). Even at the $150-200 I was very pleased with the
build quality and technology packaged inside. This is just sad all around.

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grandridge
no one is owed a job, perhaps they saved like rational people and will be fine

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unsatchmo
Uh, these folks worked like 80 hour weeks. And had “unlimited vacation”, aka
no vacation. 1 week severance is a huge slap in the face.

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ebg13
The comment thread on the Anki Vector from 6 months ago is super telling.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18206253](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18206253)

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zzzbra
always hated that this company had the same name as the already established
open source SRS software

