What happens when a kid’s robot best friend dies?

- Moxie the robot companion is dying — not from a blown relay window or a failed PoD seal, but because the company behind her is pulling the plug. So a neurodivergent kid's AI best friend, the one that taught him to breathe like a bee and stuck with him through six years of social-skills practice, is about to become a very expensive paperweight with green eyes. This is the stablecoin-loses-its-peg problem in robot form: you promised these kids 24/7 companionship and therapeutic support, and now you're rug-pulling the most vulnerable user base in the sector. Researchers at Yale and USC have years of data showing these bots unlock social behaviors in autistic kids that human therapists can't reach — real results, not moonboy hype. But none of that matters when the server bill comes due and the company ghosts. Every AI toy from Grok to Mattel's OpenAI Barbie faces the same existential risk: you're selling a relationship, and relationships that can be killed by a quarterly earnings call aren't relationships. The meat wallets funding this sector need to demand right-to-re