Why billion-dollar robotics startups are obsessed with folding laundry

In recent months, some of the buzziest robotics startups — including Figure AI, Sunday Robotics, and Weave Robotics — have shown off robots that autonomously fold clothes. Together, the companies have raised billions of dollars at lofty valuations, as investors bet that home robots.

For now, Silicon Valley would like to help you match your socks. Home robotics companies are focusing on laundry because it's an ideal first task.

What Happened

It is difficult enough to showcase a machine's intelligence and physical control, and safe enough that failure carries few consequences, roboticists say. It is also a chore almost everyone does, and few enjoy.

• The Japanese company behind the $16,000 laundry-folding robot, Laundroid, filed for bankruptcy in 2019, and FoldiMate made repeated splashes at the Consumer Electronics Show in the late 2010s but never shipped a product.

• Weave's Isaac, for instance, costs $8,000 upfront, or $449 a month through a subscription.

• Sunday, for example, trains its AI models on people doing everyday tasks in $200 sensor-equipped gloves that mirror its robots' hands.

Key Details

Consumers don't need to know how AI works to appreciate a robot that turns a crumpled pile of clothes into a neat stack. Teaching a robot to fold clothing has long been a "holy grail" of the field, said roboticist and Spelman.

• A truly general-purpose home robot — the robot butler Silicon Valley has long promised — is still many years away, Corso said.

• The most valuable data — the kind that could help companies truly master laundry and expand into other tasks — may come from the robots themselves as they encounter the countless edge cases of.

• While large language models are trained on internet data, there is no comparable dataset for the physical world.

Why It Matters

That's because robots must learn to handle "deformable objects" — clothes that bunch, fold, and wrinkle — and manipulate them with enough precision to fold them well. Sunday CEO Tony Zhao told Business Insider that the company chose laundry partly because it.

• Robotics startups are scrambling for real-world data needed to train the "brains" of their machines.

• For many of these companies, getting robots into homes to fold laundry is also the start of what they hope will become an expanding data flywheel.

What Reports Say

Coverage of the story so far points to:

• Continued reporting by Business Insider as more details emerge