2 weeks Ago By Aisha Malik
Roomba maker iRobot is laying off 105 employees — about 16% of the company’s workforce, per an SEC filing — saying the cuts are part of an “operational restructuring plan.” The move comes after iRobot slashed roughly 350 jobs — about 31% of its workforce — earlier this year. Those cuts were made after plans for an Amazon acquisition fell through.
Amazon planned to acquire iRobot for $1.7 billion, but the companies mutually terminated the agreement, noting that they didn’t see a path to regulatory approval in the European Union. iRobot received a $94 million termination fee from Amazon as a result.
iRobot CEO Gary Cohen addressed the latest cuts during the company’s Q3 2024 earnings call on Wednesday. “These moves, while challenging, have fundamentally changed the way we work with our partners to efficiently develop and build our robots,” Cohen said. “Our new operating model is able to deliver a significant increase in new product introductions with less than half the internal resources and approximately one-third the cost.
” Since the start of 2024, the company has reduced its global workforce by approximately 50%..
