I am an Indiegogo backer and ordered a Mark II on
February 24 in 2018 (Contributer ID 11) which had an estimated delivery date of
December 2018. Mark Mañalac from Mycroft AI wrote me on 26.11.2022 that I need to wait for an E-Mail asking to confirm the address. Is this still valid in 2024? Does anyone knows about a schedule for shipment?
From this Neon AI Personal Assistant website it seems to be that ordering is possibe, so the shipment to old backers should be continued as well, right? But who get’s his/her device when?
Hello @cb2 , welcome to the community!
On behalf of all of us at Neon AI, thank you for your support of open source private voice AI development. We also supported the Mycroft project, through backing and later through purchasing Mark IIs and providing other resources.
I’m sorry to have to be the one to share with you that the company Mycroft AI has officially been dissolved.
I work for Neon AI, which is a completely separate company from Mycroft AI, though we were a supporter and channel partner of Mycroft from very early in the project. We did all we could to help, which included both backing the project and purchasing Mark IIs. Purchasing Mark IIs was also important for us as it was our planned platform for our own Neon AI private personal voice assistant.
Regretfully, Mycroft AI was dissolved this year, in early 2024. We worked together with Michael Lewis and OpenVoiceOS to preserve the codebase, the documentation, and this community space so that development of Open Source Private Personal Voice Assistants and Conversational AI projects can continue to build on the progress that was made by Mycroft AI.
Mycroft AI was sadly unable to provide Mark IIs to most of their backers. There has been a lot of confusion from people who backed the project, and I have to conclude that the language used for backer rewards ought to be changed in the future. Referring to the transactions as “orders” isn’t really accurate, as they are not standard commercial purchase transactions.
Mycroft AI sent some backer rewards, and what they shared in their news was that their plan had been to sell some Mark IIs, and continue to gradually fulfill backer rewards as they had the resources. Unfortunately, the manufacturing cost of the Mark II ended up being much higher than expected, and the profit margin on them became very slim. There were other challenges which cost Mycroft AI a great deal of their operating capital, including COVID-19 manufacturing delays and a lawsuit. You can read more details in Micheal Lewis’s ( @michael-mycroft ) posts on here.
We at Neon AI have some of our purchased Mycroft Mark II units remaining, and they are available for developers to order or to earn as incentive / reward for work on the codebase. Developers & DIY users now also have the option to set up the Neon AI assistant and the OVOS assistant on the Raspberry Pi 5, Linux systems, and other hardware. We’re working on an end-user friendly, off the shelf hardware option, aiming for the end of 2024.
I am sure I speak for all of us at Neon AI and OpenVoiceOS when I say we hope that you and others who supported the Mycroft project will continue to support the development of open conversational AI as active members of this collaborative community.
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