Mycroft AI
2015 - 2023, 8 years old
An open-source voice assistant and Linux-based smart speaker positioned as a privacy-respecting alternative to Alexa and Google Assistant.
Mycroft launched on Kickstarter with the Mark I and later the Mark II smart speaker, attracting a community of developers who wanted a voice stack they could inspect and self-host. Component costs for the Mark II rose from roughly 99 dollars to about 300 dollars per unit, and a long-running patent suit from Voice Tech Corp drained cash the company could not replace. In February 2023, CEO Michael Lewis announced the company was winding down, with staff reduced to a handful and remaining Kickstarter rewards unfulfilled. The codebase lives on in the community fork OpenVoiceOS, but Mycroft AI as a company stopped shipping product.
- Founded
- 2015-01
- Shut down
- 2023-02-10
- Funding raised
- $6M
- Years alive
- 8
- Founders
- Joshua Montgomery