Moxie Robot
Moxie was an $800 social AI robot from Embodied Inc that held conversations with children aged 5 to 10, widely used by families of autistic kids.
RIP Moxie Robot
Shut down · January 2025
Moxie was an $799 social robot from Embodied Inc that talked with children aged 5 to 10 and became a genuine companion for many autistic kids. Embodied ceased operations in November 2024 after a lead investor pulled out of a funding round at the last minute. Because Moxie's conversation ran entirely on Embodied's cloud, the robots stopped working when the servers went dark on 30 January 2025 — no refunds, no offline mode. A volunteer project, OpenMoxie, later revived them on local servers.
Last known pricing: $799 device plus subscription (historical)
Is Moxie Robot shut down?
Yes. Moxie Robot shut down on January 30, 2025 and is no longer available. Its record is preserved in the ToolDirectory.AI graveyard, our hand-reviewed registry of AI tools that shut down or were acquired.
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Overview
What happened to Moxie
Moxie was a social robot for children built by Embodied Inc, founded by iRobot's former CTO Paolo Pirjanian. It cost $799, stood about a foot tall, and held open-ended spoken conversations with kids aged roughly 5 to 10 — practising social skills, reading together, running daily missions. Families of autistic children in particular reported it working where other tools had not.
Embodied announced on 26 November 2024 that it was ceasing operations. A lead investor had pulled out of a critical funding round at the last minute and no replacement could be found. The servers were switched off on 30 January 2025.
Key Features
- Open-ended spoken conversation driven by cloud language models
- Daily missions and reading activities aimed at social-emotional learning
- Emotional inference from voice and facial expression
- Parent app for progress tracking
- Widely adopted by families of children with autism
Why the robots stopped working
Moxie's intelligence lived entirely on Embodied's servers — speech recognition, conversation, emotional inference. When the company wound down, the hardware on a child's desk became inert. There was no local mode to fall back on, no refunds, and no warranty support, with Embodied citing its own financial position.
The shutdown became a widely cited example of what happens when a companion product with real emotional weight depends on a startup's cloud staying up. Parents posted videos explaining to crying children that their robot friend was going away. A volunteer effort, OpenMoxie, later released software letting owners run Moxie against a local server — but only for units that had installed a specific update before the servers went dark.
What to use instead
There is no direct replacement for Moxie's specific form factor. The education and learning tools in our directory cover conversational tutoring software, and the healthcare category includes companion and behavioural-support apps — but as software, without a device that can be switched off by a vendor.