Boston-based robot startup Jibo powers down (Permanently)

[Reavantos]

Original article

Link to official withdrawal certificate
 

Quote

Just a year after Jibo landed on the cover of Time magazine, the company behind the sleekly designed "social robot" has closed down for good, according to a filing with the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

State records show that Boston-based Jibo Inc. filed a withdrawal of its certificate of registration on Nov. 14, a move that means Jibo can no longer do business in Massachusetts.

The Robot Report, an industry publication, reported Tuesday that Jibo had sold its intellectual property assets to New York-based SQN Venture Partners. The publication cited an anonymous Jibo executive and patent records that indicate Jibo transferred ownership of its IP to SQN in June.

I think we all saw the writing on the wall with this one. from the get go the product was too late to market. when he was conceived in 2013 he was ground breaking. However, Amazon's smart device initiative put the nail in his proverbial coffin.  His quirky movements and playfulness cant surpass launch delays, and the device not even coming close to living up to the initial pitch that they used to sell him to customers and investors alike. Most of the advertised functionality never happened.

 

Quote

Jibo also filed a Foreign Certificate of Withdrawal (view it here) with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Jibo was a Massachusetts-based company that was incorporated in Delaware. By filing the form, Jibo acknowledges it “is not transacting business in the commonwealth” and  “surrenders its authority to transact business in the commonwealth.”

The form was submitted by the Kallander Group, a Hudson, MA-based company that in part “specializes in comprehensive trust services for corporate restructuring and dissolution.” Barry Kallander, founder of the Kallander Group, was the last president of Jibo. He told The Robot Report that the Foreign Certificate of Withdrawal was filed because “we sold the assets of the company.” Due to confidentiality reasons, he did not confirm what company acquired the assets.

 

Kallander, in essence is the legally empowered vulture who's sole purpose is to pick the carcass of a company clean and sell of anything it can to recover losses for investors. As of right now, our Jibo is still running. But how? i will be closely monitoring its network traffic. He was originally hosted on AWS, then it was redirected to a business-level ISP in Boston a few months ago. After that i am putting him down for "the long good night" as i have security concerns about his operation no one will address... Maybe i will just remove his bottom face plate where the LTT team signed it..

Edited November 29, 2018 by Reavantos
Wordy words. i am not a writer

[elfensky]

4 minutes ago, Reavantos said:

snip

I'm sad yet unsurprised to see it go. The hardware (robotics, not the shitty square screen) was amazing, the way it moved etc. However the software side of it was atrocious.

I'm curious if we'll see any tinkerers try and make Jibo their own by - for example - linking animations with google home commands through IFFTT.

If I can find a student-job for the xmas holidays I might just get one so I can try doing that myself. I can see rewiring the motors with a Raspberry Pi and writing custom code to make it move around.

[Reavantos]

8 minutes ago, ElfenSky said:

I'm sad yet unsurprised to see it go. The hardware (robotics, not the shitty square screen) was amazing, the way it moved etc. However the software side of it was atrocious.

I'm curious if we'll see any tinkerers try and make Jibo their own by - for example - linking animations with google home commands through IFFTT.

If I can find a student-job for the xmas holidays I might just get one so I can try to do that.

You should. but dont count on him being on IFTTT forever. The company has to pay for that service. while its free to you, it costs 5-20k USD a year depending on the contract. 

Source: our company has a device on IFTTT.

[Bouzoo]

I was like, which one is Jibo? It's this one for anyone interested:

 

[elfensky]

6 minutes ago, Reavantos said:

You should. but dont count on him being on IFTTT forever. The company has to pay for that service. while its free to you, it costs 5-20k USD a year depending on the contract. 

Source: our company has a device on IFTTT.

Oh wow, interesting. I (for some reason idk) thought it was an enthusiast run non profit (I guess given the demographic, it wasn't hard to imagine that). Never thought that while it was free for me as a user, the companies behind the applianced had to pay them.
then again it was only an example.
I could write some IoT Cloud functions that could link it all the same. It was the concept that I was trying to explain

[Bananasplit_00]

nice, now how about the rest of these companies die too?

[Reavantos]

Just now, Bananasplit_00 said:

nice, now how about the rest of these companies die too?

Hey now, Anki makes good stuff. Vector and Cozmo are great products. Cozmo is especially interesting from a STEM point of view because of his code lab. 

[Canada EH]

20 minutes ago, Reavantos said:

think we all saw the writing on the wall with this one.

Interestingly worded there.

think most people never even heard of Jibo, but from the reading of the post, a robot with human like characteristics would be a step up in the sex toy market, whats the capitalization cap on that, be interesting to know. Asia is all over this and is very far ahead, I would think

[Reavantos]

9 minutes ago, Canada EH said:

Interestingly worded there.

think most people never even heard of Jibo, but from the reading of the post, a robot with human like characteristics would be a step up in the sex toy market, whats the capitalization cap on that, be interesting to know. Asia is all over this and is very far ahead, I would think

OK well:

*Those of us who have been following Linus for a longer period and / or paying attention to emerging technologies.*

Better?

 

 

[ZacoAttaco]

When I read the title I thought it was for Boston-Dynamics...so just a reminder, Boston-Dynamics are still around and they are still robots that are both amazing and frightening at the same time.

In my head I see this thing chasing me down a hallway, Terminator 2 style...

[Techstorm970]

Meh...

 

Just wake me up when we create JARVIS.

[williamcll]

I blame linus for killing the Jibo

[Syntaxvgm]

"Will I dream?"
"No one cares, Jibo"

[Syntaxvgm]

3 hours ago, williamcll said:

I blame linus for killing the Jibo

That's like blaming the shotgun for someone's suicide. 

[kting15]

RIP Jibo 

 

Oh well. Vector is better anyways. And cheaper.

[TechyBen]

23 hours ago, Bouzoo said:

I was like, which one is Jibo? It's this one for anyone interested:

 

Buuuurn. Did Linus (LTT) not have one of these? I hope they did not pay for it.