Regulators Killed Amazon-iRobot Deal and Handed American Innovation to China

Three years ago, iRobot the Massachusetts-based creator of the Roomba robotic vacuum had a way out. The company had struck a deal to be acquired by Amazon, which would have provided scale, investment, and competitive pricing power to help it compete with the rising tide of cheap Chinese knockoffs.

But the Biden administration’s hyper-aggressive Federal Trade Commission (FTC), under Chair Lina Khan, blocked the deal in the name of “antitrust,” arguing that Amazon shouldn’t be allowed to get bigger. Now? iRobot is bankrupt and headed straight into the arms of its Chinese manufacturer, Picea, which will assume 100% control under the bankruptcy plan.

That’s right: the same company Washington regulators said was too valuable to be acquired by an American firm is now Chinese-owned.

Let’s break it down:

• iRobot’s proposed deal with Amazon would have paid shareholders $61 per share in cash. Thanks to the FTC, shareholders now get wiped out entirely.

• The company was forced to lay off one-third of its workforce, and U.S. consumers lost their only significant American-owned player in the home robotics space.

• Instead of benefiting from scale, iRobot was overwhelmed by cheaper foreign competition and rising manufacturing costs — the very challenges Amazon was ready to help solve.

This isn't just another corporate sob story. It's a blueprint for how the U.S. government, under Biden’s leadership, is sabotaging American innovation in the name of ideology.

The FTC cheered the deal’s collapse at the time. “We are pleased that Amazon and iRobot have abandoned their proposed transaction,” they boasted. Apparently, they’d rather see American tech leaders die on the vine than allow them to partner with successful U.S. companies.

And the outcome is not just ironic it's infuriating.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy put it bluntly:

“This American company invented this product, invented the category, and built a business that was almost $1 billion in revenue… What Western regulators were saying is that they trust these two large Chinese companies with maps of the inside of U.S. consumers’ homes more than they do Amazon. That can’t be what we were going for.”

But it was. Under the Biden administration, ideological warfare against U.S. companies is more important than economic growth, jobs, or national security.

Let’s be clear: iRobot didn’t just lose to competition it lost to Washington regulators who don’t understand or respect the private sector. And now, Beijing is reaping the benefits.

Even more disturbing is that Lina Khan, the FTC chair responsible for killing the deal, is now helping steer the political agenda as chair of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s transition team in New York City bringing her anti-growth crusade straight into municipal governance.

Meanwhile, China keeps winning.

This is the inevitable result when bureaucrats pick winners and losers and always choose ideology over reality. We’re watching a pattern unfold:

• Block U.S. companies from growing.

• Watch them fail.

• Hand over their intellectual property and operations to foreign competitors especially China.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s happening. America needs regulators who understand capitalism not radicals obsessed with punishing success.

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