Jibo, the Boston-based startup that has delayed shipment of its social robot multiple times, just raised another $13.1 million from investors. According to a Form D filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jibo is looking to raise a total of $28 million.
According to Crunchbase, Jibo has now raised a total of $65.4 million in five Rounds from 13 investors.
Robotics Trends has reached out to Jibo for comment and will update this story with any new information that becomes available.
Jibo, the highly-anticipated social robot that raised $3,710,410 on Indiegogo in September 2014, has missed multiple shipment dates. Jibo was supposed to ship to its earliest Indiegogo backers by September 2015. That didn’t happen, of course. In April 2016, the company delayed shipment until the October 2016 timeframe so that Jibo could have “a little more time for practicing my skills and getting better at talking with you, so I can become the best Jibo I can be.”
In August 2016, the company announced Jibo won’t ship to anyone outside the US and Canada due to “performance latency issues.” The company said the solution is to, eventually, have a “fully localized Jibo” in different countries. For example, a Jibo that speaks and understands Japanese with servers located in Japan, or a German-speaking Jibo built with servers located in Germany.
Then in September 2016, the company another delay to November 2016. And the Jibos that will ship to backers will be pre-launch models on which the hardware will be finalized, but the software still needs some work. In that same announcement, the company didn’t offer a timeframe for when fully-functioning Jibos will ship.
So investors still remain confident in Jibo. Are you?
