Cinder Grill, the crowdfunded smart countertop cooking device that, errr flamed out last year (read our coverage of the legal saga), appears to be reborn, courtesy of an acquisition by Desora, who announced the news today.
In a pretty rare turn of events, the nearly 1,000 people who backed Cinder on Indiegogo will actually be getting the product they paid for! Most backers of failed hardware project get bupkis, but Desora posted the following on the crowdfunding platform today:
The Cinder Grill and its technologies were acquired and absorbed by Desora. Cinder is now being reintroduced as part of the Desora family of precision grilling and food products, including iKamand, a smart grill controller, ProJoe, Classic III, and Big Joe III, high-caliber grills powered by Desora. All of you who have supported Cinder previously will be receiving your grills as we bring the product to the U.S. market.
The Cinder can also be purchased online now for $429.
Upon hearing the news, we had a few questions, the first of which being, who is Desora? The company hadn’t come across our radar, but it has the aforementioned line of outdoor grill and grill control products including the iKamand smart grill temperature controller, so the Cinder acquisition is on brand for the company. According to Crunchbase, Desora has raised an undisclosed Series A round from Morningside Group, a Shanghai-based “private investment group founded in 1986 by the Chan family of Hong Kong.”
In the press announcement, Desora said it acquired Cinder in November 2018, which is a month after Cinder filed for bankruptcy UPDATE: Following the publication of this article, I learned from Desora’s CEO that his company’s acquisition offer was made before Palate Home actually filed the bankruptcy paperwork.. As we wrote back in October:
Chapter 7 bankruptcy means that Palate Home’s assets will be sold off to pay its creditors. What this means for the future of the technology behind Cinder is unclear. Will the underlying IP be acquired and baked into a different product?
We reached out to Desora to see if we could suss out any further details around the acquisition, the state of manufacturing and the future of the Cinder.
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