iRobot, the Massachusetts-based maker of the Roomba robot vacuum, has filed for bankruptcy. While competition from newer, innovative rivals played a role, iRobot’s collapse cannot be understood without examining the role of regulators and politicians who blocked the company’s best chance to survive.
As Market Institute Senior Fellow Norm Singleton explains in a recent RealClearMarkets article, iRobot’s downfall is a case study in how modern antitrust enforcement—driven by ideology rather than economics—can weaken American companies and hand advantages to foreign competitors.
In 2023, Amazon announced plans to acquire iRobot for $1.65 billion, a deal that would have provided the struggling company with capital, engineering talent, and scale needed to compete in an increasingly crowded global market. But the acquisition quickly became a political target.
“iRobot was put on the path to bankruptcy by European Union bureaucrats, former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.”
Senator Warren and other lawmakers urged the FTC to block the deal, arguing Amazon should not be allowed to “buy its way out of competition.” But as Singleton notes, Amazon pursued the acquisition only after failing to compete with iRobot on its own—precisely the kind of market outcome antitrust law is supposed to allow.
Meanwhile, EU regulators coordinated closely with the FTC, signaling the deal would never be approved overseas. Amazon ultimately withdrew, citing regulatory roadblocks.
“Immediately after Amazon pulled out, iRobot laid off a third of its employees and now faces the possibility of bankruptcy.”
The irony is hard to miss. Blocking the Amazon deal did not preserve competition—it weakened an American company while strengthening its Chinese rival, Roborock, which now leads the global robot vacuum market.
Singleton also highlights how the FTC under Lina Khan went beyond domestic enforcement, actively assisting the European Union in implementing the Digital Markets Act—regulations that disproportionately target U.S. technology firms and force them to share intellectual property with competitors.
“Thus, Khan used taxpayer money to make American tech companies less competitive.”
There is a sharp contrast with the current FTC leadership. Singleton notes that Chairman Andrew Ferguson has taken a more restrained approach and has openly criticized EU regulations that threaten American innovation and free speech.
The iRobot saga offers a sobering lesson: antitrust populism does not protect workers, consumers, or innovation. It protects ideology—and often benefits foreign competitors at America’s expense.
“If Lina Khan does for New York what she did for iRobot, businesses, workers, and consumers are in for a long four years.”
Read the full RealClearMarkets column by Norm Singleton to see how antitrust enforcement lost sight of competition—and helped regulate an American innovator into bankruptcy.
