What Happens to an AI Toy if the Company Shuts Down?

If the company behind a cloud-connected AI toy shuts down, the toy can stop working. This already happened: in January 2025, Moxie robots went quiet after their maker closed its doors.

Quick disclosure before anything else: we make SkyBuds, an AI companion plush, and our toy carries this same category risk. We answer our own questions at the end of this post.

What happened with Moxie

Moxie was a $799 companion robot made by Embodied. The company shut down in late 2024. In January 2025 the servers went dark and the robots stopped working. Families did not get refunds.

The money was only part of it. Families and kids were hurt by it, and the money was only part of that. We are not going to score points off that. It was a bad outcome for real families, and it is the clearest warning this category has ever gotten.

Why every cloud toy carries this risk, ours included

Real-time AI conversation takes serious computing. The toy hears your child, the audio goes to servers, and the reply comes back moments later. SkyBuds works this way too, which is why it generally needs an internet connection to talk. The connectivity details live on our product page and FAQ.

Cloud dependence is what lets a toy hold a real conversation. It is also what makes the toy mortal. If the servers stop, the conversation stops. And no company, us included, can honestly promise to exist forever. Embodied surely did not plan to fail either.

The questions to ask any maker before you buy

Ask these of every AI toy company, including us. How plainly they answer tells you as much as the answers themselves.

Question	Why it matters	What a good answer looks like
What still works if your servers shut down?	Moxie owners learned the answer the hard way, after the sale.	Specific and plain, even if the honest answer is "very little."
What is your refund policy, in writing?	A published policy is a commitment. A verbal promise is a hope.	A page you can link to, with a number of days on it.
Will you answer hard questions at all?	A company that dodges this question before the sale will not get more honest after it.	A real phone number or email where a person responds.

Our own answers

On offline use: real-time conversation runs in the cloud, so SkyBuds generally needs an internet connection to talk. The specifics are on the product page and FAQ, and we will not invent a rosier answer here.

On refunds: we have a 30-day refund policy from delivery, published at /pages/refund-policy, with shipping terms at /pages/shipping-policy. SkyBuds is currently a pre-order, so see the product page for current pricing and ship dates.

On reaching a human: call (978) 541-3603, Monday to Friday, 10 to 2 ET. A person answers, and you can ask them this exact question.

We will not promise SkyBuds would somehow keep working if we shut down. Nobody selling a cloud toy can make that promise honestly, and a company that does deserves your suspicion. What we can do is put our policies in writing and pick up the phone when you call.

If the risk is a dealbreaker

Then buy a toy that does not depend on anyone's servers, and we mean that. A plain stuffed animal will still be there in twenty years. Screen-free audio players like Tonies and Yoto play recorded stories from figurines and cards rather than holding a conversation; how each handles long-term server questions is worth asking them directly, so check their sites. For some families that trade is the right one, and we would rather say so than pretend the question away.

Companies, prices, and policies all change. Before you buy any AI toy, ours included, read the maker's current policies on their own site and ask the shutdown question yourself.