Sound hardware company Sonos has hired a good chunk of the engineering talent left jobless from the abrupt closure of consumer robot maker Anki.

Details: Sources say that Sonos has hired at least 20 technical people from Anki, with the hires to form the basis of a new San Francisco office for the Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Sonos.

The San Francisco operation will be led by Brian Chapados, who will report to Antoine Leblond, the former Microsoft executive hired by Sonos in 2014 as VP of software.

Why it matters: Good engineers are hard to find and Sonos sources say the company had immediate need for the skills possessed by Anki's team.

Yes, but: This probably won't help owners of Anki devices, as the team will be working on other Sonos-related projects. Sonos just hired the former engineers; it didn't acquire Anki's IP or product lines.

Before shutting down, Anki said it would keep operational the cloud services needed by its devices and that it had contracted for support should software updates be needed. however it offered only scant details.