In China, an army of humanoid robots is rolling into households. They’re attempting what everyone else so far has failed to do.
To turn the idea of a robot maid from a science fiction trope into a product that’s actually useful (and won’t kill you). The autonomous machines are developed by a new breed of well-backed robotics firms that are going to unusual lengths to familiarize their humanoids with real homes. Meanwhile in the West, startups are popping up with plans that are even more radical.
Will the strategies finally bring mechanical housekeepers into the mainstream? Or will they end up in the graveyard with the rest of them?
GigaAI’s Wuhan Rollout
In Wuhan, the Huawei-backed startup GigaAI just started rolling out its humanoid robot for households. Launched in 2023, GigaAI is led by Huang Guan, who had a PhD from Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University.
His startup is pushing its wheeled humanoid, named the SeeLight S1, into real homes with significant financial backing. GigaAI reported raising $147 million in March 2026 and another $221 million the following month. Its total funding is around $440 million.
The startup has about double the reported funding as the Silicon Valley firm Sunday Robotics, which is also developing a wheeled humanoid helper for domestic tasks. Its valuation is also slightly higher at nearly $1.5 billion versus Sunday’s $1.2 billion.
GigaAI’s first rollout is already happening in Optics Valley, a major Wuhan tech hub where 100 of the robots are entering talent apartments for scenario testing. The government-backed housing is for skilled working, researchers, and other young professionals that Wuhan wants to attract.
GigaAI is providing the robots free of charge free of charge for early deployments. They’ll collect feedback from tenants, monitor how they handle real household layouts, and fix issues before wider seed home trials. It also gives them valuable access to real-world data to improve its artificial intelligence systems.
Why World Models?
In the US, 1X Technologies is taking a more direct-to-consumer approach to gain the same kinds of insights. They’re charging early adopters $500 per month for its NEO humanoids that need remote operators in hopes of achieving general autonomy with the data collected at the homes. Like GigaAI, 1X is developing a world model, which is an intelligent system that builds an internal understanding of how physical reality works.
Most major humanoid companies now claim to use some kind of world model, even if they define it differently. They’re built from a range of data sources, including devices that people wear while performing tasks for gig work or because their workplace requires it. Sunday Robotics, for example, is paying so-called Memory Developers $30 to $60 per hour to wear its proprietary data-capture gloves while doing domestic chores.
In New York City, a newer startup called Shift is offering apartment cleaning services free in exchange for permission to collect data. Its workers wear headsets that record footage capturing hand movements, tool use, and task steps from their POV. Shift says the data is anonymized, processed, and then licensed to companies seeking examples of real household and commercial cleaning tasks.
Other data sources can include teleoperated robot movements, 3D scans, simulation data, and even synthetic video showing how objects and people move through the world. Experts like Jim Fan, co-leader of NVIDIA’s Project GR00T humanoid foundational model, say world models are the next major leap after LLMs. They say they’re especially important for robots in households, where conditions are messy and always changing.
GigaWorld/GigaBrain
Unlike most humanoid companies, GigaAI started out developing a world model called GigaWorld before getting into hardware.
According to the startup, GigaWorld generates realistic footage, 3D scenes, camera angles, object layouts, textures, and motion data. Its robots’ AI system, called GigaBrain, uses that data to recognize objects, predict how they’ll move, plan safe actions, and send commands to robot hardware. GigaBrain is described as a vision-language-action (VLA) model trained on thousands of hours of robot data, much of it generated through GigaWorld.
SeeLight S1
Once proven safe, GigaAI says it will expand beyond young professionals and into homes with elderly people, children, and pets.
The S1 reportedly operates for 4 hours on a single battery charge. Its top speed is reported as 1.5 m/s (3.3 mph), which is plenty fast for inside a home. Its maximum single-arm payload is 5 kg (11 lbs).
In its launch video, the SeeLight S1 uses simple grippers, but earlier GigaAI demos have shown prototypes integrated with five-fingered hands. One scene shows the mechanical maid cleaning a toilet and then washing its end effectors in the bathroom sink.
The humanoid’s current cost is around $28,000, but GigaAI says it’s aiming for pricing below $14,000 by next year.
Astribot’s New Budget Humanoid
That’s around what the Shenzhen startup Astribot is charging for its new wheeled humanoid, the T1. The robotics firm, which is also known as Stardust Intelligence, has started taking orders for the robot that’s a scaled-down version of its flagship S1 humanoid.
The Astribot T1 stands 155 cm (5 foot 1), weights 66 kg (146 lbs), has a reported 23 degrees of freedom (DoF), and can carry up to 5 kg (11 lbs) with one arm. It integrates with robot grippers and five-fingered end effectors for a wide range of tasks at homes, labs, and workplaces. Like Astribot’s S1, which is priced starting around $100,000, the new humanoid’s movements are powered by a cable-driven architecture.
Its AI learns largely from human demonstration data. Though its launch video showcases potential household applications, Astribot is mostly marketing the T1 as a platform for practical testing and deployment of next-generation machines.
X Square’s Robot Chaperones
Another Shenzhen firm, X Square Robot, is partnering with 58.com (often called China’s Craigslist) on a unique way to train its robots.
They’ve launched a service where customers book a cleaning session that includes a robot cleaner with a human chaperone. X Square’s humanoid handles structured tasks like wiping surfaces, picking up debris, and tidying, while the human companion handles judgment-heavy work.
The service is priced at $22 for 3 hours.
The startup is planning a broader rollout of its wheeled humanoids that are powered by its self-developed Wall-B embodied AI model. According to X Square, the AI model is trained on real home data to handle unpredictable routines, clutter, layouts, and task variations.
Founded in 2023, X Square has raised nearly $600 million to date from major tech and industrial players like Xiaomi, Alibaba, ByteDance, and SAIC.
Eden’s $10/Hour Robot Worker
The idea of renting robots out at an hourly rate is also gaining traction in the West.
In San Francisco, the Y Combinator-backed startup Eden Robotics just started taking reservations for its Eden1 industrial semi-humanoid robot for physical labor as a service. Early orders include 80 hours of labor per month starting with a locked rate of $10 per hour.
Like X Square’s robots, capabilities are limited now, but the startup insists they’ll get more advanced as its artificial intelligence improves.