The Segway, that futuristic-looking scooter that was billed as a revolutionary way to get around but quickly became a pop-culture punchline, has found another new owner.

Bedford, N.H.-based Segway has been purchased by Ninebot, a China-based competitor that makes similar-looking personal transportation devices, the two companies said Wednesday.

The two privately held companies didn’t reveal any details of the buyout, but Ninebot simultaneously announced that it had raised a new $80 million investment round from its financial backers, which include smartphone maker Xiaomi and US venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.

The deal represents a quick turnaround for the two companies’ relations: in September, Segway petitioned federal trade regulators to block Ninebot and several other companies from selling similar devices in the United States, saying they were violating Segway’s patents.

It’s the third time that Segway has changed hands since inventor Dean Kamen founded the company in 1999 to commercialize his idea for a motorized, self-balancing two-wheeled device that could help people get around cities.

The first Segways went on sale on Amazon.com in 2002, but the devices never caught on with a mass market despite heavy publicity around their debut and a reported development budget of more than $100 million. Kamen predicted consumers would buy 50,000 Segways in the first year, but the company said it didn’t reach that milestone until 2009.

As a private company Segway doesn’t regularly report sales, and it’s unclear how many Segways are in use today.

The $5,000 pricetag was certainly a barrier, but Segway also fought with state and local regulators over safety worries and disagreements about how to classify a device that was not quite a motorbike, but definitely more substantial than a unicycle. The company said they weren’t meant for traveling in the streets with cars, but government officials and pedestrians objected to the new objects zipping around on sidewalks.

“Something that looks like a broomstick handle stuck to a chainsaw with wheels — it’s kind of ridiculous to consider it a motor vehicle,” former Massachusetts motor vehicle registrar Dan Grabauskas told the Globe in 2002.

Then there were the jokes, helped along by some unfortunate crashes and safety problems.

President George W. Bush infamously crashed while riding a Segway in 2003 at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, after failing to turn on the power. That same year, the company recalled 6,000 of its scooters because of safety worries.

Then there was the sad fate of James W. Heselden, a British millionaire who bought the Segway company in 2009 and died less than a year later when he fell off a cliff and into a river while riding a Segway near his home.

The Segway also made more lighthearted appearances in the entertainment world, featured as a mechanical foil of hard-luck Gob Bluth, played by Will Arnett, in the TV series “Arrested Development,” and as a trusty sidekick to comedian Kevin James in goofball comedy movie “Paul Blart: Mall Cop.”

As those security guard jokes show, Segway moved past a strictly consumer market over the years and produced models intended for industrial and police uses, including three-wheeled models piloted by traffic cops in some cities.

But that market expansion apparently wasn’t enough to sustain Segway as a standalone company, and competitors offering cheaper, smaller models have begun entering the fray in recent years.

Paolo Santi, a researcher who studies urban mobility at MIT’s Senseable City Lab, said the Segway and similar vehicles could still have a future as a part of broader transit systems, similar to bike-sharing programs like Hubway in Boston.

“If these kind of solutions can in some way be integrated with other transportation modes, that could be a way of actually scaling up what is currently a niche market into a mass market,” he said.

In its announcement, new owner Ninebot said Segway would continue to operate under its own brand name as a wholly owned subsidiary.

“Our combination with Ninebot will enable us to provide more intelligent and valuable products to our customers. We are confident in our future,” Segway president Rod Keller said.

Image via Flickr