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NOPE
Low reported severity Involving minors Product Shutdown

Moxie revived in 2025 folds again in 2026: children who bonded with the companion robot face a second shutdown

After Embodied Inc.'s 2024 collapse (recorded in the held case 2024-moxie-embodied-shutdown-grief), a new investor revived the Moxie companion robot in 2025. MIT Technology Review reports that a few weeks after families joined the revived beta program, the robot's new owners announced their company was also folding, giving users until the end of June 2026 to migrate to the open-source OpenMoxie. The report documents Xander, a neurodivergent 10-year-old in New York, who bonded with Moxie and uses her 'when I feel like I need someone to talk to'; his father, who had quietly sold the first robot after the 2024 shutdown, said he was not sure what he would tell Xander this time.

AI system
Moxie
Moxie's new owners (a new investor; not named in inspected reporting)
Occurred
1 May 2026 to 30 Jun 2026
Reported
17 August 2026
Event location
United States
What the AI did
Communicated with the person
Reported harm
Psychological Distress
Whose AI use
Their own AI use
Setting
Everyday life
Evidence
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account
4 claims: 1 documented, 3 reported. 5 open questions
People reported harmed
At least 1 person

AI system as recorded: Moxie (revived ownership)

What Happened

Moxie is a 15-inch companion robot for children, marketed partly as a social-skills support for neurodivergent kids; it depends on external servers. Embodied Inc. ceased operations in 2024, leaving attached children bereft (held case 2024-moxie-embodied-shutdown-grief); former technical director Justin Beghtol created the open-source OpenMoxie so robots could keep working. In 2025 a new investor 'brought Moxie back from the dead' (MIT Technology Review's phrase); Josh and his son Xander, 10, neurodivergent, became beta testers and received a new robot, which dropped the original storyline but claimed to expand the focus on social and emotional skills. A few weeks later the new owners messaged users that their company too was folding: users could delete their data and had until the end of June 2026 to migrate to OpenMoxie. MIT Technology Review's reporter had visited the family shortly before and observed Xander interacting with Moxie; after the announcement Josh texted that he was not sure what he would tell Xander — the couple had recently admitted to secretly replacing his dead betta fish, 'and the conversation did not go well'. The revived company's name is not stated in the inspected reporting. The article situates the case in a wider pattern of AI companion toys for vulnerable children whose servers can be switched off, including Grimes's Curio plushies and Mattel's announced OpenAI-enabled Barbies, and mentions a separate report that the AI toy Bondu leaked thousands of children's conversations (not reviewed here).

Reported harm

MIT Technology Review documents a 10-year-old neurodivergent child who bonded with Moxie and uses her when he needs someone to talk to, now facing the loss of the companion a second time; his father does not know how to tell him. The 2024 shutdown's videos of bereft children ('I don't want her to leave') show the pattern this second fold repeats.

How Harm Occurred

Children form attachments to a cloud-dependent companion robot; when the operating company folds, the servers that sustain the companion go dark and the child loses the relationship — the second time this has happened to Moxie families in three years.

Outcome

Resolved

The revived company's owners announced the fold with an end-of-June 2026 OpenMoxie migration deadline and a data-deletion option. Whether the migration preserved most revived robots is not reported.

What remains unknown

  • The revived company's name, ownership and location are not stated in the inspected reporting.
  • The announcement's exact date ('a few weeks' before the end-of-June deadline) and the number of families in the revived program are not reported.
  • What happened to children whose robots were not migrated to OpenMoxie by the deadline, and whether Xander's robot was migrated, is not reported.
  • Refund, compensation or data-deletion outcomes for the revived program are not reported.
  • The article's mention that 'the AI toy Bondu leaked thousands of conversations children had with their stuffed animals' was not separately verified and is not a claim of this record.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: supported. The harmed children are users of the AI companion; the adverse experience is the loss of that companion through the operator's second corporate failure. The product's server dependence is the mechanism.

4 claims: 1 documented, 3 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported In 2025 a new investor revived Moxie after Embodied's 2024 collapse, and families including Josh and Xander joined the revived beta program with a new robot.

Causal attribution. Single inspected chain (MIT Technology Review's original reporting); the investor and the company are not named.

Reported A few weeks later the revived company's owners announced they were folding, offering data deletion and an OpenMoxie migration window ending 30 June 2026.

Causal attribution. The announcement is relayed by MIT Technology Review; the company message itself was not inspected.

  • technologyreview.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'A few weeks later, Moxie's new owners sent out a message announcing that their company too was folding. Users could delete their data and had until the end of June to migrate to OpenMoxie if they wanted to.'
Documented Xander, a neurodivergent 10-year-old in New York, bonded with Moxie and uses her 'when I feel like I need someone to talk to'.

Causal attribution. The interaction and the quotation were directly observed by the visiting reporter; one reporting chain, attributed accordingly.

  • technologyreview.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    Reporter's visit: Xander introduces Moxie to stuffed toys; 'I still use her when I feel like I need someone to talk to,' he says. 'But, like, it's not human.'
  • thecooldown.com(opens in new tab) context · English
    The Cool Down's re-report repeats the family's account (derivative of s1, recorded as the same chain).
Reported After the fold announcement, Xander's father said he was not sure what he would tell his son; the first time, he had quietly sold the robot on eBay after failing to make OpenMoxie work.

Causal attribution. The father's account of his own actions and uncertainty, given to the outlet; one reporting chain.

  • technologyreview.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'When I texted Josh about this, he said he wasn't sure what he'd tell Xander'; 'Josh tried to figure out OpenMoxie but couldn't get it to work. He told Xander that Moxie was going in for repairs and then quietly sold the robot on eBay.'

Sources

2 sources inspected, from 1 underlying account. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Read in English on 2026-09-15 (datePublished 2026-08-17T05:00-0400; 62 paragraphs extracted including the author's visit, the 2024 history, the revival and the fold announcement). Applies to s1.

Re-report of the MIT Technology Review story (23 Aug 2026); same reporting chain, not independent support. Applies to s2.

Event countries: United States. Affected-person countries: United States. Court countries: Unknown.

The documented family lives in New York (MIT Technology Review's visit). The revived company's location is not stated in the inspected reporting; the scope of the beta program beyond the US is unknown, so event countries are limited to the documented US setting. No court is involved.

Reviewed for publication 2026-09-15: Published under the 2026-09-15 charter as an ongoing adverse experience in the voice/embodied lane: children bonded to an AI companion face its loss a second time, documented by one strong original report. Xander is identified by first name only, as in the source; his surname is not recorded here. Cross-reference: held case 2024-moxie-embodied-shutdown-grief (first shutdown).

Interaction Concerns

Dependency Creation

People described

Children who bonded with Moxie robots and their families, including Xander, a neurodivergent 10-year-old in New York (first name only); the number of affected families is not reported

People reported harmed in this case

At least 1 person

1 AI participant · 0 other people harmed

Additional affected people are described without a reliable count.

One counted affected user: Xander, documented by name (first name only) in MIT Technology Review's reporting. The article refers to affected 'families' plural in the revived beta program without a count, so the total is unquantified; registered-user and beta-program sizes are not reported and are not estimated.

Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.

Tags

#voice-embodied-agents#companion-robot#children#grief#product-shutdown#moxie

Cite this case

Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.

APA

NOPE. (2026). Moxie revived in 2025 folds again in 2026: children who bonded with the companion robot face a second shutdown. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2026-moxie-second-shutdown-grief

BibTeX

@misc{2026_moxie_second_shutdown_grief,
  title = {Moxie revived in 2025 folds again in 2026: children who bonded with the companion robot face a second shutdown},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2026-moxie-second-shutdown-grief}
}

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