Noah Shachtman
Security

iRobot's Revenue Up, Founder Out

Revenue is way up at one of the military’s main robot-makers. But iRobot is still operating at a loss for the year. Its stock price took a beating today (along with eveyone else’s). The company’s chairman and co-founder has suddenly resigned. Xconomy reports that "iRobot co-founder Helen Greiner, who has been instrumental in guiding the […]

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Revenue is way up at one of the military's main robot-makers. But iRobot is still operating at a loss for the year. Its stock price took a beating today (along with eveyone else's). The company's chairman and co-founder has suddenly resigned.

Xconomy reports that "iRobot co-founder Helen Greiner, who has been instrumental in guiding the company since its inception in 1990," stepped down today. Just last month, fellow co-founder Rodney Brooks left the company. Which means CEO (and new chairman) Colin Angle is the last remaining original member of iRobot to still be with the firm.

iRobot has scored a number of monster deals with the military in the past year. One contract for bomb-spotting robots was worth up to $286 million; the other, as much as $200 million. That helped boost third quarter revenue at iRobot to $92.4 million -- up 45 percent from the same time, last year. But the company is still operating at a $4.7 million loss for the first nine months of 2008. That's better the $11.7 million loss for the same period, last year. But "it’s no secret that iRobot has encountered some bumps in the road and made some key personnel changes recently,"* Xconomy* notes.

[Photo: iRobot]

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