Goodbye, dirt-cheap manicures: San Francisco nail-painting robot company Clockwork is shutting down its machines amid a merger with another firm in the space.
Tuesday is the last day to get one of Clockwork’s $10, 10-minute “minicures,” the company said in an email to customers.
“While this may be goodbye for now, it’s also a new beginning,” the email said, adding that the firm will “join forces” with another robot nail company, 10Beauty, and “the technology behind Clockwork will live on.”
Clockwork began testing its nail-painting robot in 2021 in the Marina and has since launched 22 machines across the country, including two in San Francisco. As recently as last summer, the company had expansion ambitions: CEO Renuka Apte told The Standard in late July that it had nearly 70 machines in contract to be deployed.
Airports, new residential buildings, and Walmart Supercenters are popular locations for the robots, she said at the time.
For its promise of a speedy way to freshen up your nails, the company raised more than $10 million, according to funding data aggregator Crunchbase.
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10Beauty’s website says its machine, which doesn’t appear to be available publicly yet, will take care of “cuticle management,” as well as nail shaping, filing, and polishing. Clockwork’s machines could only apply polish, though Apte said other services were in the works.
Clockwork is far from the first consumer robotics firm to fizzle out in the Bay Area. Robot-powered coffee shop Cafe X closed three locations in 2020, and food companies Eatsa and Zume flopped too.
Clockwork did not respond to a request for comment.