Willow Garage's Last Days

In 2006, Scott Hassan, a prolific software engineer, started a research lab dedicated to robotics called Willow Garage. Since then, he’s funded the lab with about $20 million of his own money each year, hiring dozens of the world’s leading robotics engineers and giving them almost total freedom to pursue their often off-the-wall ideas. Willow Garage developed an operating system that’s become the standard software for most of the robotics industry. It also begat several startups that have been bought by tech companies including Google.

But any discussion of Willow Garage must now take place in the past tense. In January, Willow transferred the support duties for its robots to another company and Hassan began to devote all of his time to running Suitable Technologies, a company he started and one of Willow Garage’s many offshoots. Researchers at the lab who hadn’t already left for startups have been looking for jobs across the tech industry. (A small crew remains to sell off the robots Willow had built.)