Critical employees abandon EK Water Blocks amid financial issues
Is the end of EK in sight? Top employees leave the water cooling company as financial woes continue
Things are not looking good for EK Water Blocks. The company has been facing financial issues for quite some time, leading to delayed payments to both suppliers and employees. Earlier this month, Slovenian authorities started investigating the company over delayed payments to employees. Now, we can confirm that several critical employees have left the company for greener pastures.
Attila Gobor, EK’s Head of Product Marketing, has left the company and has joined Noctua. Additionally, Joe Robey, EK’s Lead Product Designer, has left the company to join Thermal Grizzly as Head of Mechanical R&D. Many other employees have left EK recently, but these two can be classed as major departures.
EK Water Blocks has lost one of their leading engineers
The loss of Joe Robey will hit EK hard. Many of the company’s major product lines were designed by Joe, including many of what we will class as EK’s best products. This includes EK’s recent Direct Die CPU cooling solutions. Beyond that, we know that Joe had designed almost every distribution plate that EK has ever produced. Before this time at EK, Joe Robey was a famed PC modder that created custom distro plates for many of his PC builds, before such purchasable products existed.
In our eyes, losing the talents of Joe Robey will hit EK hard. If EK endures, they will need to do so without one of their most experienced product designers. Beyond that, Robey’s move to Thermal Grizzly suggests that Thermal Grizzly may soon compete with EK in several markets.
(Joe Robey (Left), and Attila Gobor (Right))
What does the future hold for EK?
Currently, the future of EK is not bright. The company is in a lot of debt, and it is possible that the company is heading towards bankruptcy. There have even been reports that EK had temporarily lost access to some of their bank accounts due to “lack of provisions”. However, we cannot confirm these claims.
Recently, we have spoken with insiders from other major PC companies about the prospect of EK being saved/acquired by a competitor. Simply, the answers that we got to these enquiries was that EK Water Blocks had too much debt, and that acquiring EK would not be a financial viable move. That makes bankruptcy a real possibility for EK.
As it stands, it looks like the end of EK Water Blocks may be in sight. The company may not exist in its current form much longer, which has huge implications for the liquid cooled PC market.
You can join the discussion on EK’s loss of critical employees on the OC3D Forums.
