Who controls your Roomba data following bankruptcy sale

Even trailblazers sometimes get left behind, and years after iRobot brought robotic vacuums into the mainstream with its Roomba series, tough financial times forced the company to declare bankruptcy. Back in December, we learned that iRobot was being acquired by its main manufacturing partner, a company called Picea out of China. If you were at all concerned about what that transition meant for you and your data, iRobot has some updates to share that you’re going to want to know about.

The big news is that iRobot is taking steps to insulate user data, and hopefully assuage concerns about Chinese access to that info. In order to accomplish that, it’s forming a new company called iRobot Safe, one that’s US-based and governed by a board of Americans. While Picea now fully owns iRobot, the creation of iRobot Safe as a separate entity is intended to detach the stewardship of user data from the rest of the company’s activities.

Despite the specter of that recent bankruptcy still hanging over the company, this actually doesn’t sound like that bad an outcome for iRobot — or at least not its employees. Even with the shift in ownership, the company plans to keep its operations in the US going strong, continuing to run engineering, marketing, and development out of its Massachusetts headquarters.

Still, none of this reorganization necessarily changes the market factors that led to iRobot finding itself in the precarious position it did in the first place, so it’s probably far too early to make any predictions about what chances the company has of staying in business longer-term. Today’s robot vacuum market is positively flooded with competition, and innovations like models with arms or those that can climb stairs are challenging preconceptions about what vacuums are capable of — and what consumers should be demanding of brands like iRobot.