Hardware Startup Failures

Former Apple designers raised $230M for a screenless AI pin — then got the worst reviews in tech history

The Tesla killer backed by a fugitive billionaire — a decade of promises and almost no cars.

The Swedish EV truck startup that built a safer city delivery truck — and ran out of money before scaling

Taiwan's battery-swapping EV scooter network. SPAC at $2.35B. Going concern warning in year three.

The $665M photonic quantum bet that restructured as timelines stretched to 2030+.

India's electric scooter giant — disrupted by its own quality crisis before competition could.

Finland's high-end VR headset maker for enterprise cut half its staff as the metaverse hype cycle collapsed

Smart thermostats ran out of heat

A photonic AI chip startup discovered optical computing still can't beat Nvidia on price-performance.

3D printing for the factory floor. The factory floor wasn't buying.

Belgium's premium connected e-bike startup laid off 60%+ of staff as hardware margins and supply chain chaos destroyed the business case

The warehouse automation startup that rode the COVID e-commerce boom to a $2 billion valuation — then filed Chapter 11 in March 2024 when post-pandemic fulfillment demand normalized and its capital-intensive model couldn't adapt

Harvard's quantum networking spinout died waiting for a market that won't exist until 2030.

Autonomous fulfillment robotics that ran out of runway before the market arrived.

Japan's most lovable robot couldn't make its creators love the unit economics.

Built edge AI chips for China's boom market — then US export rules killed the dream.

Went public at $1.88B, sold everything to Continental for $3.9M — a 99.8% loss in three years.

Europe's quantum darling hit the commercialization wall as the funding winter arrived.

Tally counted every item on every shelf except the months of runway it had left.

Raised $320M to beat NVIDIA at the edge. Three layoff rounds later, the edge won.

The supersonic revival that couldn't find an engine — or the economics to justify one.

One safety incident at Barrick's Cortez mine ended a $42M robotics bet.

Quantum computing's SPAC poster child: overpromised qubits, underdelivered revenue.

Two failing LIDAR giants merged hoping to survive — the math still didn't work.

The world's first commercial quantum computer company proved annealing can't beat classical solvers.

SoftBank-backed drone empire that expanded to 30 countries and imploded.

The Peloton of rowing drowned when the home fitness tide went out.

The small satellite rocket that exploded on live TV and still raised $500M

A senior-simplified tablet overwhelmed by Amazon and Apple offering 'good enough' accessibility features.

Half a million smart home users bricked overnight by a surprise $5/month paywall.

The company that built the first Android phone — then lost everything to Samsung

Privacy fears and slow enterprise sales killed ambient fall detection before it could scale

A $500M mirror that reflected Lululemon's biggest acquisition mistake.

A Fitbit for dogs that was out-resourced, out-marketed, and out-distributed.

The $3,000 smart gym that COVID made famous — and reopened gyms made irrelevant

The company that invented autonomous vehicle LIDAR couldn't survive the market it created.

German electric jet startup raised €900M to build air taxis. Filed for insolvency before completing a single commercial flight. Then came back from the dead.

Smart contact lens startup raised $216M over eight years to put a microLED display inside a contact lens—then shut down its consumer AR programme in 2023.

Swing analytics hardware that couldn't keep pace with software-only sports tracking alternatives.

The 3D printing marketplace that raised $100M promising to put personal manufacturing online — hollowed out when industrial customers went direct

The "Tesla of e-bikes" with proprietary anti-theft tech — and a repair cost structure that bankrupted it.

Elegant mobility devices for elderly and disabled users — a genuine social mission that didn't scale to VC returns.

Drobo built a beloved RAID storage system for creatives and SMBs. Cloud storage made it obsolete. Bankrupt 2023.

Robots that climbed buildings but couldn't climb the funding ladder fast enough.

Norway's humanoid robot pioneer quietly dissolved itself into an OpenAI-backed rebrand.

Smart windows that tint automatically to save energy. Buildings didn't want to pay smart-window prices.

Sony's award-winning IoT toy was too clever, too niche, and too expensive for classrooms.

The UK electric truck startup that reached production-ready hydrogen-electric trucks — entered administration with 191 employees after failing to close Series C funding

Germany's smart thermostat company sold to a French infrastructure fund in a distressed deal after burning through €200M+

Argentine satellite company. SPAC peak. 90% value destruction.

UK drone airspace startup that built the infrastructure but couldn't monetize it.

When humanoid companionship met manufacturing reality, the dream evaporated.

Certified too late—26 months of regulatory delays killed the contracts that waited.

Europe's €600M brain simulation megaproject ended without a single commercial neuromorphic product.

The smart battery that made old smoke detectors intelligent—beaten to death by a $12 Wyze sensor.

DHL wore them. But Zebra and RealWear out-priced them into oblivion.

Competing with Komatsu and Caterpillar for haul truck autonomy in Chile was a losing bet.

Cambridge-built pet health wearable that veterinary bureaucracy killed before consumers could buy it.

$185M and nine lenses later, Light's computational camera couldn't outshine a smartphone.

Ukraine's $1B security hardware unicorn lost its factory to blackouts, not bullets.

A smart collar that couldn't connect—or convince customers to pay monthly.

Autonomous drilling dreams crushed by hardware costs and a BHP contract cancellation.

Fitness unicorn. COVID made it essential. Post-COVID made it furniture.

Last-mile EV cargo van startup raised $450M via SPAC and shut down within two years when executives were caught buying pre-SPAC shares at employee prices.

Hydrogen electric trucks at $18B SPAC. The demo truck was rolling downhill. Founder convicted.

Swedish audio brand backed by German investors. AirPods killed the premium headphone mid-market.

Nine years of walking in place—and never actually getting anywhere.

EPFL mapping drone pioneer absorbed and dismantled by its struggling parent.

Flood warnings that arrived too late—14 months too late.

The French IoT unicorn that raised €295M to wire the world — and sold its entire network for €5M

Walmart's robot partner learned the hard way about single-customer dependency.

E-cigarette startup hit $38B valuation after Altria paid $12.8B for 35%. FDA bans, youth epidemic lawsuits, and congressional hearings. Altria wrote off the entire investment.

The pet wearable that Mars bought for $117M and quietly shelved six years later.

MIT's shape-shifting apartment furniture, too expensive for the interest rate spike that killed luxury construction.

Norwegian engineering quality, Chinese price competition, no winner.

The smart vending startup whose entire addressable market disappeared in a single pandemic weekend.

When your product demo sinks, so does your company.

Carbon fiber 3D printing for aerospace — without the scale to survive.

Retail robot startup from Chile. Hardware timelines and funding cycles don't match.

a16z-backed public safety drone platform sold in distress to Motorola.

The photonic chip leader that sued Cisco into buying it after Cisco tried to walk away mid-deal.

A connected boxing bag that punched above its unit economics and knocked itself out.

Carbon nanotubes that work in the lab, but cost 50x too much to sell at scale.

Smart apartments for landlords, killed by a pandemic that emptied the buildings.

The smart mirror startup that couldn't reflect its way past COVID.

The gadget that was going to change cities — but only moved airport security guards.

$2.6B raised on AR demos the product could not match. Launched, failed, pivoted. 50% layoff in 2020.

NHS-tested mixed reality training that couldn't survive the sales cycle.

EMG-embedded workout clothes raised $33M but couldn't convince consumers to pay $300 to sweat smarter.

The smart feeder that forgot that failing to feed pets is a literal life-safety issue.

Android's creator tried to reinvent the smartphone — then his past caught up with him

Indian AR/VR headset startup acquired by Flipkart in 2017 for a reported $4M—then quietly dissolved in 2020 as neither consumer nor enterprise AR found a market in India.

A breathing-sensor wearable for stress that couldn't survive poor retention and COVID supply chain collapse.

A breathing-tracker that pivoted three times and still couldn't find a market willing to pay.

Smart workout clothes that were too smart—and too expensive—for their own good.

The e-skateboard that defined a category but couldn't outlast the pandemic

Google-backed construction drone startup buried by DJI's cheaper alternatives.

LiDAR drones that worked in the lab but choked in dusty, humid mine faces.

Printing 3D objects from office paper was clever — but not a viable business.

The Carnegie Mellon robotics startup that built Cozmo and Vector — beloved consumer robots that sold millions of units but could never generate the margins to survive.

Seven Dreamers Laboratories developed Laundroid, a robot designed to wash, dry, iron, and fold laundry for home use.

A $117M smart home hub that tried to charge subscription fees with 24-hour notice—and bricked devices as leverage.

WiFi SD cards that automatically uploaded your photos — until smartphones made cameras irrelevant

MatterFab developed affordable metal-based 3D printers to democratize additive manufacturing for industrial applications.

Desktop 3D scanning was a solution looking for a mass-market problem.

Raised $100M to compete with Amazon and Google in home security—and lost.

Google's VR headset platform — discontinued because the phones powerful enough to run it did not support it.

The AR headset that wowed TED in 2016 and died quietly in 2019.

A US-based drone manufacturer specializing in advanced tethered drones for military, law enforcement, and first responder applications.

Named after the thing it was trying to replace — the startup that caused a cultural firestorm and then quietly died

The tiny Spotify player for runners that couldn't survive when Spotify itself changed direction.

Autonomous warehouse carts that Amazon bought before the world could see them at scale.

Three decades of 'Help, I've fallen' buttons wiped out by Apple Watch fall detection in one product cycle.

The AR startup that raised $275M to replace the hard hat with a smart helmet — and sold the IP to Snap for $34M

The world's first social robot for the home — a $900 rotating companion with a face and feelings, rendered irrelevant by a $99 Amazon Echo.

Won DARPA's hardest robot challenge — Google bought them, then killed them anyway.

GoPro's drone — recalled for falling out of the sky after battery failures, re-launched to compete with DJI, discontinued again, and killed $8B in shareholder value along the way

A $118M drone empire that collapsed overnight with zero severance.

A $700 home robot that smiled and filmed your family — cancelled two weeks before shipping.

A smart sprinkler startup killed by better-funded competitors and hardware margin compression.

Amateur GPS tracking hit a professional wall when the big players moved downstream.

Built a $99 dedicated email device at the exact moment iPhone and Android launched — the smartphone revolution eliminated the need for dedicated email hardware within 2 years

The cobot pioneer whose friendly robot face couldn't mask insufficient manufacturing precision.

Riding the 3D printing hype to a $750M valuation — then crashing back to Earth.

An aftermarket heads-up display device that projected GPS navigation onto a car's windshield to make driving safer.

Hospital video monitoring for seniors: 18-month sales cycles and a $15M loan default killed it

The invisible backbone of 7 million smart homes, commoditized and absorbed by its own partners.

A $700 machine to squeeze a bag your hands could squeeze for free.

Desktop powder sintering — squeezed out between prosumer SLA and industrial MJF.

Raised $50M for smart earbuds that could filter ambient sound in real-time. Beautiful hardware. No scalable business model.

Autonomous selfie drone pre-sold 60,000 units from a viral video. The viral video wasn't shot with the Lily camera. Product never shipped at scale. $34M in pre-orders refunded.

Snapchat built camera glasses for $130. Ordered 800K pairs. Sold 220K. Wrote down $40M.

A Wi-Fi connected smart wine bottle with touchscreen display for wine preservation and serving.

Microsoft's mobile OS had beautiful design and zero apps — the ecosystem never came

A Kickstarter darling that couldn't turn sleep data into a sustainable business.

The $34M pre-order drone that never shipped — and used rival footage in its own launch video.

The $700 juicer that didn't need to exist — proven live on Bloomberg.

Built a smart grocery scanner; Amazon built the same thing for free.

The wearable pioneer that got crushed by the giants it inspired.

Racing to build a 3D printing empire just as desktop printers gutted the service bureau market.

$3.2B for fitness trackers that broke. Apple Watch arrived.

The $110M startup that tried to build an Android without Google — raised money from Qualcomm, Microsoft, and Samsung to unseat Google's control of mobile, and shut down after 3 years

The $499 dream printer that left thousands of customers stranded.

AR motorcycle helmet with HUD raised $15M and $2.4M on Indiegogo. Co-founder bought a Ferrari. Company filed Chapter 7. Fraud investigation opened.

The AR motorcycle helmet that raised $15 million from backers and spent it on cars and vacations

Privacy-first senior monitoring bought by Best Buy and quietly euthanized.

From 50% US smartphone market share to zero in five years — the iPhone destroyed Canada's most valuable company

Intel paid $175M for ski goggle AR — and killed it in 12 months.

Parse was a backend-as-a-service platform that helped developers build mobile apps without building their own backend infrastructure.

Google spent 3 years building a modular smartphone. Cancelled it 6 months before commercial launch.

A smart home hub acquired by Nest for $50M and deliberately bricked by remote software update 18 months later — users' $300 devices were permanently disabled without consent.

Kickstarter record. Pioneered the smartwatch. Apple Watch launched. Sold to Fitbit for $40M in 2016.

The Kickstarter darling that invented the modern smartwatch category and was obliterated by the device it inspired.

An open source distributed database competing with MongoDB.

A GPS pet tracker acqui-hired by Mars before the hardware unit economics made sense.

An AR motorcycle helmet with GPS and a rear camera — shut down when the CEO and his brother spent company funds on Burning Man trips, sports cars, and personal vacations.

The $99 Kickstarter gaming console that briefly made the industry nervous — then disappeared.

Google put the internet on your face — and got called a 'Glasshole' for it

Europe's biggest Kickstarter drone raised £2.3M and delivered fewer than 600 of 15,000 units promised.

Boxee built the software that connected TVs to internet content before Roku and Apple TV did. Samsung acquired it. Then abandoned it.

Jeff Bezos personally demanded the Fire Phone — Amazon lost $178M and learned nothing works without apps

Bringing 3D printing to Staples proved the consumer market wasn't ready.

An online platform that democratized hardware design and customization for anyone without technical expertise.

Lumos built smart internet-connected switches that learn from user behavior to automate home appliances.

The future of computing on your face — until society rejected the camera on your face.

Smart internet-connected switches that learn from user behavior to automate home appliances.

Microsoft paid $7.2B for Nokia's phones — then wrote down $7.6B eighteen months later

Full-color 3D printing promise that evaporated into an acquisition before shipping a single unit.

$299, 24-hour battery, required a Samsung phone — returned by 30% of buyers.

Berg built a cloud platform powering Little Printer, an IoT device that printed personalized news and social media content.

Sony launched e-readers a year before Kindle — then Amazon built the bookstore Sony forgot to build.

Henrik Fisker's original EV company — raised $1.17B, built the Karma sports car, then lost its battery supplier, had 320 cars destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, and collapsed

Technically superior to the CD, cheaper than DAT — beaten by a compressed audio file.

Microsoft built a tablet that looked like a tablet but ran nothing. $900M write-down.

BlackBerry launched a tablet with no email and no calendar. Required pairing with a BlackBerry phone. Took a $485M write-down.

The first Android tablet. Launched at iPad price, with no tablet apps — and lost immediately.

$299 for a box that made your TV harder to use. Logitech wrote down $100M and the CEO called it 'a mistake.'

49 days on sale, sold more units at $99 than at $499 — HP's fastest-ever fire sale.

Microsoft's iPod killer — killed by iPod

HP paid $1.2B for Palm's webOS — and discontinued it 49 days after launching the TouchPad

Andy Rubin's pre-Android startup — built the iconic T-Mobile Sidekick, sold to Microsoft for $500M, and watched its work become the Microsoft Kin: a phone discontinued 48 days after launch

Microsoft's leaked dual-screen tablet concept generated years of hype — then Steve Ballmer cancelled it a month before the iPad launched.

Intel's living room media PC platform — nobody could explain what it was, including Intel.

The netbook that was announced, mocked, and cancelled — before a single unit shipped.

Nokia tried to beat Game Boy with a phone that required removing the battery to change games.

The Apple spin-out that invented the smartphone in 1992 — ten years too early, before mobile networks, touchscreens, and affordable batteries existed

Jean-Louis Gassée's OS company that Apple almost chose over Steve Jobs' NeXT — sold its IP to Palm for $11M after asking $400M from Apple in 1996

Motorola's $5B satellite phone network that launched 66 satellites — then filed for bankruptcy 9 months after launch with fewer than 50,000 subscribers

The PDA that invented the category and the mockery — and taught Apple how to do it right a decade later.

The original tablet company — backed by John Doerr, killed by Microsoft's pen-writing clone.

First personal computer with a GUI and mouse. Launched at $9,995. Discontinued three years later.

Danish IoT peer-to-peer connectivity platform that lost to AWS IoT and Azure IoT Hub.

Raised $34M in pre-orders from 60,000+ backers for an autonomous follow drone — the demo video used GoPro footage, not Lily footage, and the drone couldn't maintain stable autonomous flight

Chinese personal mobility hardware giant that acquired Segway then watched the market evaporate as sharing schemes flopped and e-scooter bans spread.

Ex-Apple designers raised $230M for a screenless AI wearable that reviewers called the worst product of 2024.

Bluesmart built the world first smart suitcase — then the FAA banned battery-embedded luggage and the company had nothing left to sell

Hardware-focused accelerator in Hong Kong that lost its identity as Shenzhen became the global hardware hub.

Kickstarter record $13.3M for a cooler with a blender — then sold coolers on Amazon before delivering to backers, and filed Chapter 7 with 60,000+ backers still waiting

Russia's dual-screen smartphone that proved e-ink displays don't make phones better — just more expensive

Smart card startup collected $9M in pre-orders from 80,000 customers, then went bankrupt before shipping.

The three-wheeled single-occupant EV startup that raised $130M on a niche vision no market was ready to pay for.

Raised £2.3M from 15,000+ backers for a tiny autonomous drone — WIRED's investigation found it barely flew, only 600 of 15,000 ordered were delivered, and the company folded in administration

The baby health monitor that reached a 1.1 billion dollar SPAC valuation and was ordered to stop selling by the FDA

Smart doorbell startup that raised $3.9M then got beaten to market by Ring and Nest Hello.

Smart ring startup tracking sleep, heart rate, and activity before Oura Ring and Amazon Echo Loop dominated the wearable ring market

TriEye raised $75M to put near-infrared sensing chips in every car — then the automotive chip market crashed and funding dried up before the product reached production

Robotic drywall startup raised $50M to automate construction and shut down when the hardware proved too complex to deploy at scale.

Norwegian printed NFC label pioneer that raised $300M over 20 years and filed for bankruptcy without commercial scale.

AI fitness coaching wearable raised $14M and was outcompeted by Apple Watch fitness features

The Paris sleep-tech startup raised 73 million euros for a brain-monitoring headband that genuinely improved sleep and sold its assets for nearly nothing when it could not convert clinical outcomes into consumer scale.

BQ built Spain most successful consumer electronics brand — smartphones, tablets, 3D printers, ebooks — and was gutted in 2020 when Xiaomi and Huawei made its price points commercially unviable, cutting 500 of its 600 employees.

Polish beacon IoT pioneer faded as location-aware retail never materialized at scale

Estonian IoT connectivity platform for e-bikes acquired as micromobility market consolidated

Shenzhen e-scooter brand couldn't survive Xiaomi and domestic price wars

Made-in-Africa smartphone factory shut before changing the continent

Eric Schmidt backed flying car startup that ran for 12 years and still could not make autonomous aviation commercially viable.

LiDAR sensor startup acquired by GM for $130M then shut down as autonomous vehicle ambitions contracted

Metal 3D printing darling went public at $1.5B and filed for bankruptcy three years later.

LiDAR pioneer filed for bankruptcy after the solid-state revolution it promised never arrived.

The Vespa-owned cargo robot startup that spent six years trying to convince people to own a bag-carrying robot

Enterprise AR glasses maker that sold thousands of devices but was crushed between Magic Leap and Microsoft Hololens.

Smart ring startup raised $11M to turn jewelry into notifications and found women did not want them

Polish Bluetooth beacon and indoor location startup that raised $30M and sold at distress in 2023.

Built automated home brewing machines requiring $10-30 proprietary ingredient packs — home brewing hobbyists preferred making their own ingredient packs

Singapore's 3D printer startup that proved consumers don't need $347 3D printers

A Delivery Hero-backed e-cargo bike startup that went into administration when its delivery platform customers collapsed.