Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Robotics, artificial intelligence, and coding |
Founded | 2010 |
Founder | Boris Sofman, Mark Palatucci, and Hanns Tappeiner |
Defunct | May 2019[1] |
Fate | Acquired |
Headquarters | , U.S. |
Products | Cozmo Vector Anki Overdrive Anki Drive |
Website | ddlbots anki.com at the Wayback Machine (archived 2020-03-16) |
Anki (stylized as "anki") was an American robotics and artificial intelligence startup[2] that put robotics technology in products for children. Anki programmed physical objects to be intelligent and adaptable in the physical world,[3][4] and aimed to solve the problems of positioning, reasoning, and execution in artificial intelligence and robotics.
The company debuted Anki Drive during the 2013[5] Apple Worldwide Developers Conference keynote.[6]
The company received $50 million in Series A and Series B venture funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, and Two Sigma.[2] In September 2014, Anki announced that it has raised another $55 million in Series C venture funding led by JP Morgan. In June 2016, the company announced its latest round of funding, which amounted to $502.5M, also led by JP Morgan.[7] Total funding to date is $182.5 million. Marc Andreessen and Danny Rimer serve on the company's board, in addition to the three co-founders, who met each other at Carnegie Mellon University prior to the debut of the company.
It went bankrupt in April 2019 after losing a critical round of funding[8] and shut down the following month.[1][9]
In December 2019, Anki assets, including OVERDRIVE, Cozmo, and Vector, were acquired by Digital Dream Labs. Digital Dream Labs revamped Cozmo and Vector, making Cozmo 2.0 and Vector 2.0 versions to further enhance the qualities of the robots and build on top of Anki's success; however, these products ultimately achieved less success than Anki did with the original products.[10]