Roomba maker iRobot has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, but says that it doesn’t expect any disruptions to devices as the more than 30-year-old company is taken private under a restructuring process

Roomba maker iRobot has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, but says that it doesn’t expect any disruptions to devices as the more than 30-year-old company is taken private under a restructuring process.

IRobot, which became well known for its robotic vacuums, has struggled of late, dealing with increased competition, layoffs and a declining stock price. In 2022 Amazon announced that it had agreed to buy iRobot for about $1.7 billion, but that deal was called off last year. Amazon blamed “undue and disproportionate regulatory hurdles” after the European Union signaled its objection to the transaction.

Amazon said at the time that it would pay iRobot a previously agreed termination fee of $94 million and iRobot said that it would undergo a restructuring to help stabilize the company.

iRobot said Sunday that it is now being acquired by Picea through a court-supervised process. Picea, or Shenzhen PICEA Robotics Co., Ltd., is iRobot’s primary contract manufacturer.. With facilities in China and Vietnam, Picea has built and sold more than 20 million robotic vacuum cleaners.

“The transaction will strengthen our financial position and will help deliver continuity for our consumers, customers, and partners,” iRobot CEO Gary Cohen said in a statement.

iRobot said it will continue to operate as normal during the Chapter 11 process and doesn’t expect any disruption to its app functionality, customer programs, global partners, supply chain relationships, or ongoing product support.

The Bedford, Massachusetts-based anticipates completing the prepackaged chapter 11 process by February.

In premarket trading, iRobot shares slid nearly 70% to $1.31.

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — AstraZeneca on Friday became the second major pharmaceutical manufacturer to announce it had agreed to lower the cost of prescription drugs for Medicaid under a deal struck with the Trump administration that avoided its threats of steep tariffs.

President Donald Trump made the announcement in the Oval Office with AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot, who said that during tough negotiations to reach a deal, Trump and his team of officials had “really kept me up at night.”

Under the agreement, AstraZeneca will charge most-favored-nation pricing to Medicaid, while guaranteeing such pricing on newly launched drugs, Trump said. That involves matching the lowest price offered in other developed nations.

“For many years, Americans have paid the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, by far,” Trump said, adding that the new deal may cut prices to “the lowest price anywhere in the world. That’s what we get.”

AstraZeneca’s deal follows a similar agreement Pfizer announced late last month. Advocates have generally praised the administration’s efforts to cut drug prices, though some have expressed concerns that too much onus is being placed on the manufacturers to lower costs without implementing U.S. policy safeguards to ensure such outcomes.

Both agreements, however, build on an executive order Trump signed in May that set a deadline for drugmakers to electively lower prices or face new limits on what the government will pay. Trump had suggested that a series of deals with drug companies would subsequently be coming.

“The tariffs were a big reason he came here,” Trump said of Soriot.

Cambridge, United Kingdom-based AstraZeneca makes a range of cancer treatments. Its products include the lung cancer drug Tagrisso; Lynparza, an oral treatment for ovarian cancer, and Calquence, which treats chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Those drugs brought in a total of more than $7.5 billion in U.S. sales last year.

AstraZeneca announced Thursday that it would spend $4.5 billion on a new manufacturing plant near Charlottesville, Virginia, and its Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, spoke during Friday’s Oval Office announcement to cheer groundbreaking on the new facility.

The drugmaker said that project was the centerpiece of $50 billion in investments the company plans to make in the U.S. by 2030.

AstraZeneca said it plans to reach $80 billion in total revenue by then, half of which will be generated in the United States.

Trump predicted the investment’s could lead to 3,600 jobs domestically “just to begin with.”

One of the AstraZeneca drugs was already subject to price reductions due to a Medicare negotiating strategy implemented under President Biden. Still, Trump insisted that Democrats shouldn’t “get credit” and suggested the party’s key leaders may try.

The announcements came months after AstraZeneca said it was scrapping plans to expand a vaccine manufacturing plant in its home country. The company blamed several factors, including reduced government financial support.

The Trump administration has put up a landing page for its new website, TrumpRX.gov, where people will be able to buy drugs directly from manufacturers, according to officials. Both Pfizer and AstraZeneca will offer medications through the site, according to the administration.

The website’s landing page features two very large pictures of Trump and a promise that the site is “Coming Soon” in January 2026.

It says at the bottom of the page that the site was “Designed in DC by The National Design Studio,” the new government website design hub that Trump created by executive order in August, which is being led by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia.

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Associated Press writers Tom Murphy and Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.

Democratic lawmakers are questioning whether a Boar’s Head deli meat plant at the center of last year’s deadly listeria outbreak will be fit to reopen.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, of Connecticut, sent a letter Monday asking company officials to appear before the Congressional Food Safety Caucus to discuss “a repeated pattern of food safety negligence that jeopardized Americans’ public health.”

The letter, signed by nine other Democrats, cited Associated Press reporting that described sanitation problems in recent months at Boar’s Head plants in three states. It requests a response by Sept. 26.

Boar’s Head officials have said they planned to reopen their plant in Jarratt, Virginia, in the coming months. The plant was shuttered after listeria-tainted liverwurst killed 10 people, sickened dozens and forced a recall of more than 7 million pounds of deli products. Federal officials said systemic problems at the plant caused the outbreak.

Officials with the U.S. Agriculture Department lifted the plant’s suspension in July and said that federal inspectors would assume direct oversight of operations.

Documents obtained by the AP showed problems at plants in Arkansas, Indiana and a different site in Virginia. Inspectors found instances of meat and fat residue left on equipment and walls, drains blocked with meat products, beaded condensation on ceilings and floors, overflowing trash cans and staff who failed to follow required hygiene practices.

“It is appalling that Boar’s Head is encountering similar issues at other facilities of theirs,” the letter said. “This information leaves us less than confident that the facility in Jarratt, Virginia, is prepared to reopen safely.”

Boar’s Head officials said they were reviewing the letter.

“In our more than 120-year history, what happened at our Jarratt facility was the first time that such an event occurred,” the company said in a statement. “We moved quickly, aggressively and decisively in close collaboration with regulators and leading food safety experts to identify the root cause of the problem and implement enhancements to our food manufacturing nationwide to prevent something like this from ever happening again.”

Boar’s Head officials have declined to comment on the problems identified in the recent inspection reports obtained by the AP. They said that the company has boosted food safety practices in Jarratt and other sites aimed at reducing or eliminating listeria in finished products.

Once it reopens, the Jarratt plant will face at least 90 days of heightened monitoring and inspections by federal Food Safety and Inspection Service officials. Previously, inspections were conducted by state officials who operated on behalf of the agency.

The change aims to “ensure the establishment consistently and effectively implements its corrected food safety plans,” USDA officials said in a statement. It calls for stricter enforcement if lapses occur.

In the years before the outbreak, state inspectors documented numerous problems at the plant, including mold, insects, liquid dripping from ceilings and meat and fat residue on walls, floors and equipment, records showed. They were operating under a cooperative agreement that allows state inspectors to conduct federal inspections.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.