An AI alarm clock company raised nearly $1 million on crowdfunding and went bankrupt
After raising nearly $1 million on crowdfunding platforms to build an AI-powered alarm clock, the French hardware startup Holi has filed for bankruptcy without shipping products to the vast majority of its backers. Out of the nearly 7,000 owed units, only about 1,000 shipped. Those that did will cease functioning on February 1st when Holi says its servers will go down. The Verge‘s messages to Holi went unanswered.
Holi ran campaigns on both Kickstarter and Indiegogo in late 2016 to bring the clock, called Bonjour, to life. The project was supposed to put typical smart assistant features, like weather, calendar syncing, and music playback, inside an adorable bedside clock — something that was unique at the time.
Now, Holi has announced…
