Quirky, an ambitious crowdsourced invention start-up, which raised $185 million from investors that included General Electric and leading venture capital firms, filed for bankruptcy on Tuesday.

The failure of the company, based in New York, will surely raise questions about how far the crowd-based model of innovation and product development, made possible by the Internet, can go. Other companies are using crowdsourcing to make physical goods, from Threadless for T-shirt designs to Local Motors for automobiles.

None, though, were doing it as broadly and across as wide a range of products as Quirky.

The company said on Tuesday that it was seeking protection from its creditors while it arranged a sale of “substantially all its assets.”

Quirky said that it already had an initial bid of $15 million for its Wink subsidiary, which was created last year. Wink makes software so that an array of Internet-connected home devices, as varied as thermostats and door locks, can be controlled from a smartphone app. Flextronics International USA, a contract design and manufacturing company, made the bid. Quirky hopes to attract other bidders in an auction to be completed in roughly 60 days.