Mycroft Closes Its Crowdfunding Campaign with Rewards Undelivered as It Runs Out of Runway

The Mycroft project has announced the closure of its crowdfunding campaign to build a second-generation privacy-centric smart assistant, having run out of funds — and no more hardware will ship to backers, though retail sales remain open for now.

Mycroft launched its crowdfunding campaign for the Mark II voice assistant five years ago, promising a device just as smart as the competition but built atop an open source software stack and with a focus on keeping your private data private. That promise proved tempting, with backers pledging nearly $400,000 to receive devices which were scheduled to begin shipping in December 2018.

With prices starting at just $89 for early-bird backers, the Mycroft Mark II promised plenty of bang for your buck. The company's design included a quad-core processor from Xilinx, a far-field six-microphone array, echo cancellation, beam-forming, and noise reduction in hardware, a 4" color IPS touchscreen display, microSD storage, and both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity.

Sadly, skyrocketing component costs and an inability for Mycroft's original hardware partner to deliver meant the original design for the Mark II had to be shelved in favor of a cut-down variant built from off-the-shelf components. When the devices finally begin reaching early backers, they bore little resemblance to the original design — and the retail price had been raised to $499 as the company sought to fund production of crowdfunding units using cash from retail customers.

"When we first spec’d out this revised Mark II design, the cost of the components alone was about $99," Michael Lewis, who joined Mycroft as an investor in 2020, then becoming chief executive officer, after having backed the campaign in 2018. "But as the supply chain disruption unfolded our costs rose about 50 percent, and by the time we added import and manufacturing fees our out-the-door cost rose to about $300, not including amortization of the $100,000 cost of injection molds."

It's not the per-unit losses that have put an end to the project, though, but legal wrangling with an unnamed patent holder. "The single most expensive item that I could not predict was our ongoing litigation against the non-practicing patent entity that has never stopped trying to destroy us," Lewis claims. "If we had that million dollars we would be in a very different state right now."

Regardless of the reason, though, the project has now come to a close. Lewis has confirmed that no more rewards will be fulfilled, that the Mycroft staff has been cut to just two developers, a single customer service agent, and an attorney, and that all development will cease by the end of the month unless additional investment is found immediately.

"We will still be shipping all orders that are made through the Mycroft website," Lewis adds, "because these sales directly cover the costs of producing and shipping the products. However we do not have the funds to continue fulfilling rewards from this crowdfunding campaign, or to even continue meaningful operations."

More information, including comments from backers, is available in Lewis' Kickstarter campaign update.