This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE.

In the past two months, Mayfield Robotics, makers of Kuri the robot, has shut down sales and operations, and Jibo, which has run through more than $70 million of venture funding, announced a significant downsizing of the company.

This marks a sad time for the personal/social robot market. There were amazingly talented and passionate people at both of those companies who drove themselves constantly in the pursuit of building awesome products that were well-liked. These roboticists, engineers, and designers were solving some really difficult problems. Now, because these excellent teams with experience and knowledge will likely disperse, more difficult problems will either go unsolved or will be delayed without them. We know many of our compatriots at these two businesses and are dispirited by their loss.

What happened?