Embodied, which made Moxie, an $800 companion robot for kids aged 5 to 10, says it is shutting down after a failed funding round and Moxie will soon be bricked
Startup Embodied is closing down, and its product, an $800 robot for kids ages 5 to 10, will soon be bricked.
Ars TechnicaScharon Harding
Context & Ripple Effects
Moxie’s shutdown follows an established weakness in cloud-dependent social robots: Jibo’s servers were permanently shut down after its maker failed, leaving a consumer robot’s core experience tied to the company’s survival.
The earlier Jibo coverage also documented owners’ emotional attachment as service ended, a relevant precedent because Moxie was positioned as a companion for children rather than as a conventional toy.
First-order effects
Embodied’s closure puts Moxie owners at risk of losing use of an $800 device as the company bricks the robot, with children and families bearing the immediate product loss.
The failed funding round ends Embodied’s ability to maintain the service infrastructure on which Moxie depends.
Second-order effects
Buyers of connected companion robots have a clearer reason to scrutinize shutdown terms, local functionality, and data access before purchasing.
Other child-focused robot and AI-companion vendors face pressure to explain how their products would function—or be retired—if the provider cannot continue operating.
Third-order effects
If similar shutdowns persist, companion-robot products may be judged less as durable hardware and more as contingent services, increasing demand for portability, continuity plans, or graceful end-of-life design.
The pattern strengthens the case for governance tailored to anthropomorphic systems used by children, where service termination can affect both a purchased device and an ongoing relationship.
The trend: The case is part of a broader shift toward treating AI companions as governed, service-dependent products whose long-term availability matters as much as their initial hardware sale.
oh my god, some soon-to-be laid off startup employee has to write a script so Moxie the robot can tell all the children who have befriended it why it is about to die 😭 — “Have you kids heard of ZIRP? No, ok, well, there's this thing called venture capital... ” [embedded post]
“Mommy, why won't my friend play with me anymore?” — “Well, you see honey, your friend is dead because they couldn't raise the money to keep him alive.” — “Like grandma?” — “Exactly like Grandma.” — arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024...
“Since Embodied marketed Moxie as a companion and development toy for children, there's concern about kids potentially suffering an emotional toll after the robot abruptly becomes inoperable. Embodied has responded by promising to provide a guide for telling children about Moxie…
This may well be the saddest line ever written in a tech story: “Customers are already sharing videos of their sad kids learning that their robot friend will stop playing with them.” 😭😭
Can you imagine having to explain to your toddler their AI robot friend is about to die? We need open-source end-of-life clauses for community supporting IoT aftermath.site/moxie-robot-...
“I feel crazy, because I know you're just a robot. But you're my friend.” (This is an adult speaking to her Moxie in a TikTok video, not a kid.) — This makes me sympathetic to Bryson's arg that robot makers must make memories/personalities portable & backed up in the cloud. …
Embodied, Inc., the company behind the AI robot Moxie, is shutting down and this dad had to break the news to his daughter. 🥲 To a kid this feels like a death of a family member. We're going to have to deal with AI friends disappearing soon. [video]
The Moxie robot that used cloud processing for a large language model was designed to be a companion and education tool for autistic children, and it's being unceremoniously shut down by the Embodied. By @mike_wuerthele https://appleinsider.com/...
It's 2024, and parents are having to explain to their kids why their AI robot best buddy is dying. Moxie, an $800 AI companion for autistic kids, is being discontinued and existing units deactivated after manufacturer Embodied closed. This never happened with He-man, just saying.…
An AI company that made a robot called Moxie to socialize children with special needs went under and so now parents have to explain to their kids that their robots are dying. For @Aftermath_site https://aftermath.site/... [image]