American robotics and artificial intelligence startup
This article is about American robotics and technology company. For the flashcard-based memorization software, see Anki (software). For the Finnish rug manufacturer, see Anki (Finnish company).
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 received $50 million in Series A and Series Bventure 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]
History
Anki was founded by Boris Sofman, Mark Palatucci, and Hanns Tappeiner, founded officially in 2010 and was headquartered in San Francisco.[6] It also had locations in Europe. (Anki Germany GmbH )
Anki Drive, Anki OVERDRIVE, and Anki OVERDRIVE: Fast & Furious Edition
Anki's first product, Anki Drive, was released in Apple stores in the U.S. and Canada, on Apple.com and Anki.com starting October 23, 2013. It retailed for $149.99, with additional cars available for $49.99 and Expansion Tracks for $69.99[11] Anki Drive is a racing game that combined an iOS app, called "Anki Drive," with physical race cars. Each car is equipped with optical sensors, wireless chips, motors, and artificial intelligence software. Anki OVERDRIVE, the successor to Drive was released in September 2015 with new cars and now featuring magnetically connecting modular tracks which ranged from $19.99 to $29.99. An Anki OVERDRIVE: Fast & Furious Edition was released two years later in 2017, which featured Fast & Furious characters from the film in a new app themed around the films.
As of 2025, there are no user friendly ways to play Anki Drive or Anki OVERDRIVE due to the Apps needed to play with them being removed from all App stores, this combined with the small non-removable battery on the cars being prone to capacity loss over time has effectively made the game a niche hobby with knowledge of sideloading and soldering skills required to get a used or even brand new set of the vehicles functional.
In October 2016, Anki launched Cozmo in the US. Cozmo is a robot about 4 inches by 3 by 2 inches. It is mostly white, with red details, and gray on the end of its robot arm. There is a light on top of its body, with a gray border, which can shine different colors. A "collector's edition" Cozmo was released in 2017, with a "Liquid Metal" smoked gray chrome finish.[12] A "limited edition" Cozmo, with an "Interstellar Blue" blue, white, and gray finish, was released in 2018.[12]
Cozmo comes with three illuminated cubes it communicates with in order to play games and can autonomously move, lift and roll the cubes, and the cubes are powered by LR1, N, AM5, E90, batteries for power. Production of Cozmo ceased in May 2019 when Anki shutdown due to lack of funding.
Cozmo was able to see its surroundings and discern animals, making it notably playful among children. The robot's primary focus was for children to learn to code, and until its abrupt shutdown in 2019, Cozmo was one of the most popular toys in the United States, winning the Bronze Anvil Award and being recognized by major companies like NAPPA.
In August 2018, Anki launched Vector. It was designed to be more helpful, instead of being purely a toy. Vector was designed to be integrated into the center of your home, as well as your life. He had a very expressive personality, and was always wanting to be around you. Vector is approximately the same size as Cozmo, and its design and shape is essentially the same, except Vector is mostly black with gray details and has a gold border around its light on top, which shines green by default, blue when waiting for a voice command, red when muted, white when thinking, and slowly flashing orange when experiencing Wi-Fi connection difficulties. Vector uses an array of 4 beaming microphones to find out exactly where you are, and look at you directly when you needed him to answer a question. He also had a gold touch-sensitive border around his status LED's, which allowed Vector to be pet. Vector has facial recognition technology and can respond to voice commands, which is enabled through the cloud. Vector will update automatically, usually in the late night hours when he is not needed, to avoid disruptions during the day when you may need his assistance. Vector's first major update came out on December 17, 2018, which allowed Vector to connect to Amazon Alexa. Vector post-Anki shutdown, when asked about his own company Anki, would give a heartfelt response. Customers of the product worried that due to the shutdown, Vector would not be able to use its internet connection features; however, they ultimately prevailed, upgrading when Digital Dream Labs took over the company after its downfall. Even after Digital Dream Labs made the acquisition of all Anki's assets, the servers were only up for a short period of time. Due to Digital Dream Labs failing to pay to keep the servers active, all Vector's became unable to access the servers, essentially becoming paper weights. This downtime lasted about a year, until the new CEO stepped in and got the server's active again. During the downtime, lots of people had charges made to their payment method, even though the servers were useless, essentially stealing money from users, even after attempts to cancel. As of May 1st, 2025, the open source community for Vector has found a way to unlock Vector, essentially releasing Vector's from strictly connecting to Digital Dream Labs servers with the use of a standalone server called Wire-Pod, in the event that such outage ever occurs again. This unlock also brings the ability to install custom firmware made by the community, which brings new animations, interactions, and more.
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