The patents behind PicoBrew, the Seattle startup that once promised to do for home beer what Keurig did for coffee, are up for sale again — six years after the company collapsed into receivership and after two changes of ownership.

Hilco Global, an Illinois-based diversified financial services company, announced this week that its Intellectual Property Services group has been retained by PicoBrew’s current owner to market the startup’s technology to potential buyers.

The sale includes 17 patents and patent applications, two of them pending, along with engineering and design files and product concepts. Buyers can bid on all or part of the portfolio, and non-binding indications of interest are due Nov. 18. Hilco is pitching the assets to companies in coffee, tea, kombucha, spirits, beverage appliances and housewares.

The seller is Pico Craft Group, which Hilco described as led by a former PicoBrew investor. After PicoBrew’s 2020 collapse, its bridge lender took over the assets. That lender, PB Funding Group, was managed by former Microsoft software developer Greg Whitten, The Seattle Times reported at the time. Pico Craft Group bought the assets from the lender in 2024 for an undisclosed amount, according to Hilco, which did not say who runs the group.

“PicoBrew was a true innovator in the consumer and commercial craft beverage space, and its portfolio has applications well beyond beer,” Eric Hurwitz, a senior director at Hilco, said in a news release.

The portfolio covers technology from PicoBrew’s full product line, according to the release, including the Pico Pro and Pico C home brewing appliances, the PicoStill accessory for spirits, the Pico U Multibrew platform for beer, coffee, tea and kombucha, and Z-Series brewing machines and KegSmarts kegerators for commercial use.

Bill Mitchell, a former Microsoft vice president and longtime homebrewer, founded PicoBrew in 2010 with his brother Jim Mitchell, a food scientist, and Avi Geiger, an engineer who also worked at Microsoft. Their countertop machines automated the brewing process using PicoPaks, ingredient packs based on recipes from craft breweries.

The startup became a Kickstarter regular. Its 2017 campaign for the Pico Model C raised $1.93 million from 4,301 backers, a record at the time in the site’s food category, and the $549 machine landed at retailers including Best Buy, Williams-Sonoma and Amazon. A 2018 campaign for the Pico U pushed PicoBrew into coffee, tea and kombucha.

But the company struggled to land more funding. In February 2020, after failing to close a new round, PicoBrew entered receivership. It had raised more than $15 million and cut its staff to fewer than 40, down from a peak of more than 80.

PicoBrew ceased operations in 2020, and no one has supported existing devices since, according to Hilco. Any decision about future support would be up to a buyer. The King County Superior Court approved the 2020 sale, which freed PicoBrew’s bridge lender from the company’s liabilities and from responsibility to past customers, The Seattle Times previously reported.

Some owners kept their machines brewing without the company’s servers by using a workaround developed by a Facebook group of PicoBrew users, The Spoon reported in 2020. The founders were let go after the receivership, according to the site.

When PicoBrew went up for sale in 2020, Mitchell told GeekWire that hardware takes time and multiple funding rounds backed by firm investor commitment.

He shared advice he’d gotten from Dan Leviton of Maveron: “Startups only fail for one of two reasons — they run out of heart, or they run out of money.”

Walmart looks like it might beat Amazon to the skies over the Seattle area as the retail giant announced this week that it plans to bring automated drone delivery to the region in 2027.

The move is part of a broader nationwide push by Walmart and drone operator Wing — a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet — to scale across nearly 20 U.S. metropolitan areas. By adding Seattle and Denver in its latest expansion push, the partnership aims to eventually offer 30-minute aerial delivery from more than 270 Walmart stores coast-to-coast, reaching over 40 million potential customers.

Details on which Seattle-area stores will offer the service have not yet been announced. There are no Walmart stores within Seattle city limits, but The Seattle Times reported that permit filings point to initial groundwork underway at store locations in Federal Way and Tacoma.

Federal Way Mayor Jim Ferrell said his community south of Seattle is looking forward to bringing the region “an incredible new convenience” with the advanced delivery solutions.

“The future has arrived and its being delivered by Walmart by drone!” Ferrell said in a news release.

Wing’s electric aircraft fly at speeds up to 60 mph, serving homes within a six-mile radius of participating stores. The drones carry payloads up to five pounds to drop household essentials from groceries to small electronics. Once operational, eligible local shoppers using either the Walmart or Wing app will automatically see airborne drops as a checkout option.

KIRO 7 captured a demonstration of Wing’s delivery system in Bellevue this week, showcasing how the aircraft take off and raise and lower orders.

While Seattle-based Amazon has pushed aggressively to expand its Prime Air drone fleet to nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns, the tech giant has yet to launch commercial drone deliveries in its hometown. Instead, Prime Air operations remain concentrated in markets like Arizona, Texas, and Florida.

Amazon isn’t ignoring the Pacific Northwest entirely, however. The Portland Business Journal reported last month that Amazon filed permit applications to build a Prime Air hub at a North Portland facility, targeting an early 2027 launch that has already drawn early pushback from nearby residents concerned about noise and safety.

Those noise concerns mirror a broader backlash taking shape in established test markets. The New York Times and others reported last month on residents living beneath Amazon’s drone flight paths in Richardson, Texas, who have taken exception to the constant low-altitude buzz of delivery aircraft disrupting their suburban way of life.

Wing has sought to head off potential noise backlash by re-engineering its aircraft acoustic profile. According to the company, its latest drones feature custom propellers designed to reduce high-pitched whines, keeping sound levels at roughly 43 to 50 decibels at cruising altitude and around 62 decibels during hovering drops — a level Wing claims is quieter than a standard delivery truck.

But Walmart and Wing have still encountered friction at the local level. In metro Atlanta, county leaders shut down a proposed Walmart drone hub after more than 1,000 nearby residents signed a petition citing noise, safety, and privacy concerns.