'Your data is not going to leave the US' – iRobot CEO reassures Roomba owners following takeover by Chinese company

Following years of financial struggles, iRobot – the brand behind the first commercially successful robot vacuum, Roomba – has been taken over by Chinese contract manufacturing company Picea.

Shortly after the news broke, company co-founder Helen Greiner said in an interview with Bloomberg that she found it "bizarre" there hadn't been a big public outcry that iRobot's data and information "will belong to a Chinese company" [quote at 7.50].

When I caught up with iRobot's current CEO Gary Cohen after news of the deal broke, he told me that would not be happening. "We protect the data. The data is staying on our servers in the US. Our servers are protected in the US. Our European data stays in the US. The data is protected, it's encrypted," he explained.