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Humanoid robots are working real shifts, China ships the most of them, and AI glasses are the first wearable to break out. This category also has a real graveyard — a funded AI pin is dead, one AI-wearable startup only survived by being bought by Amazon, and another was acquired by Meta in December 2025 and discontinued outright. We track both the momentum and the failures, with real funding and status on every card.
Two very different maturity curves are playing out under one label. Humanoid robotics is still mostly pre-revenue but extremely well-funded — Figure AI alone raised over $1B at a $39B valuation, and its Nvidia talks reported this month are unconfirmed. Wearable AI is the opposite: cheap enough to actually ship, but littered with failures — Humane's AI Pin is dead, and when Meta acquired AI-wearable startup Limitless in December 2025, it discontinued the product and sunset its app rather than keeping it alive. Read the funding and status line on every card below before you bet on any of these.
Humanoid robots have gone from demo reels to real shifts. Warehouse and factory robots from this list are already working alongside people at GXO, Toyota, BMW and others — and the best-funded startups here are raising billions on the bet that a general-purpose home robot is next. One of them, Agility, is heading to public markets, and China's makers (next tab) ship far more robots.
The best-funded humanoid-robotics startup in the world — over $1B raised in its September 2025 Series C at a $39B post-money valuation. In October 2026 The Information reported that Nvidia is in talks to invest about $1B more; neither company has confirmed it. Figure says it built its 1,000th Figure 03 in July 2026, and Figure 03 returned to BMW's Spartanburg plant in June. Home trials are early: Figure reports its Helix 2.5 software completed 56% of tasks in 30 homes it had never seen. On September 8, 2026 Figure also committed an initial $3.5B to a compute deal with Nscale, which took a stake in the company (Humanoids Daily, a secondary source). Unit counts and results are company-reported, not independently verified.
The pioneering legged-robot maker, now owned by Hyundai and pushing hard into AI-driven automation for its own plants. Spot has been commercially available for years. At CES in January 2026 it unveiled a production-ready Atlas, with first units going to Hyundai and Google DeepMind. Hyundai says it plans 25,000+ Atlas robots across its and Kia plants, starting in Georgia in 2028, with 30,000 units a year of capacity by 2028 — plans, not deliveries. No sales to outside customers have been announced.
Doesn't build robot hardware at all — builds the "brain." Its π models are general-purpose robotics foundation models meant to give many kinds of robots broad physical skills; the latest, π0.7, came out in April 2026. Early partners include laundry-folding startup Weave and e-commerce packer Ultra. Its last announced round was $600M at $5.6B (Nov 2025); filings and press reports since point to roughly $1B more at about $11B, which the company has not confirmed. No disclosed revenue.
Austin-based humanoid-robot maker backed by Google and Mercedes-Benz, scaling up its Apollo robot after a $520M raise in February 2026 ($935M+ in total). In June 2026 it announced Robot Park, a 90,000 sq ft Austin hub where operators teleoperate Apollo 2 robots to generate training data for Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics models, and it has teased an Apollo 3. It has not disclosed production numbers.
Oregon-based warehouse-robotics pioneer whose bipedal Digit is one of the few humanoid-style robots doing ongoing paid work. On June 29, 2026 Agility announced a deal to go public by merging with Churchill Capital Corp XI at a $2.5B pre-money value (planned ticker AGLT), with about $620M of gross proceeds including roughly $200M from investors led by Foxconn. It says Digit has logged 65,000+ operating hours across nine customer sites and cites $300M+ in multi-year orders, subject to milestones, ahead of a next-generation Digit v5. The SEC declared the merger registration effective on October 13; Churchill shareholders vote on November 2, and the deal is expected to close in November if approved. The deal was still pending at our last check; the figures are company-reported.
The first humanoid robot actually being pre-sold for the home, not the warehouse. Pre-orders opened October 28, 2025 with a $200 refundable deposit. The Hayward, California factory opened April 30, 2026, and its first units went to 1X's own testing; 1X says some customers get NEO this year and others later, and we have not found independent confirmation of a customer delivery. When NEO can't finish a task itself, a 1X operator can take over remotely in an owner-approved "Expert Mode," so expect a human in the loop. Size, lifting and noise figures (66 lbs, 150+ lbs lifted, 22 dB) are company-stated and untested by us. Norwegian-American, OpenAI-backed.
Vancouver-based humanoid-robotics company whose Phoenix robot is designed to learn new physical tasks quickly — a bet on fast adaptability over narrow, pre-programmed skills. Caution: it has raised $140M+ since 2018, but in early 2025 reporting said it laid off 30+ staff around a CEO change and was seeking a $10M convertible-note financing. Magna agreed to pilot Phoenix in 2024. We could not find fresh 2026 funding or deployment news, so treat its current status as unverified.
Tesla's in-house humanoid program. In its Q3 2026 shareholder update (October 21), Tesla said Optimus production began in Fremont on its high-volume lines and that these are the first production-quality bots it has built. The deck lists California as "Early Ramp" and Texas as "Construction", with no capacity number. Tesla gave no unit count, price, outside-sales date or V3 unveil date. In January, CEO Elon Musk said Optimus was not yet in material use in Tesla's factories and was still in R&D, and in April he said the initial ramp would be slow. The roughly $30,000 figure is a verbal estimate from Musk in 2024, and Tesla reportedly told an analyst that outside sales could start in the second half of 2027 at the earliest. TechRadar (October 24) reports that Musk said output could reach about 20,000 robots a week by 2027; we could not verify that figure. Timelines and unit counts here are company statements, not independently verified.
The West raises the biggest rounds; China ships the most robots. Two Chinese makers, AgiBot and Unitree, accounted for roughly three-quarters of humanoid shipments in the first half of 2026 by one tracker's count, and Unitree and UBTech are already listed on stock exchanges. The honest catch: many of those units go to education, research, exhibitions and data collection rather than factory floors, and the two market trackers disagree on the totals. Prices are lower, and Unitree sells to individuals. For China's AI labs, see World AI → China.
The biggest humanoid shipper of 2026 so far. Two market trackers rank AgiBot first for the first half — about 8,400 units by one count (44% share) and 8,600+ by another (about 35%) — and the trackers disagree on the global total (19,100 vs. nearly 25,000), so treat all of these as estimates. The company says revenue passed 1B yuan in 2025 and has reported 20,000 robots produced in total by September 2026. Its Hong Kong IPO process formally started in July with Citic, CICC and Morgan Stanley as sponsors; no listing has happened yet. No public price list.
The most established public humanoid maker. In its first-half 2026 results (Aug 28) UBTech reported shipping 921 full-size humanoids (16,123 including smaller models), with revenue doubling to 1.27B yuan while still losing money. Customers named in its earlier announcements include BYD, Geely, Foxconn, Audi FAW and SF Express, mostly for sorting, transport and inspection. Honest caveat: 96.4% of its full-size revenue comes from custom industrial projects, so this is closer to systems integration than a standard product.
China's best-known humanoid and robot-dog maker, and the only maker here whose robots an individual can realistically buy. A US reseller guide (Aug 2026) lists the R1 from $6,870, the G1 from $21,600 and the H2 at $40,900 — not an official Unitree price list, and excluding shipping and add-ons. It went public in Shanghai on August 19, raising about $900M at roughly a $9B valuation with DeepSeek among its investors; the stock jumped about 460% on day one, touched roughly $66B, then fell about 45% from the peak within a week (as of Aug 25). First-quarter 2026 adjusted profit fell about 53%. Many G1 units go to education, research and performances, not factory work.
A fast-rising Chinese humanoid startup that sells into factories, retail and healthcare. It announced a RMB 2.5B round in March 2026 with state-linked and industrial backers including a national chip fund, Sinopec and SAIC's finance arm, after a December 2025 round of $300M+ at a reported valuation above RMB 20B. It says it has cumulative orders for several thousand units; that is a company claim and we could not verify deliveries. Caixin reported it is eyeing a Hong Kong IPO.
The electric-car maker XPeng is building its own humanoid, IRON, and says it aims to start mass production by the end of 2026, with the first commercial use as a shopping guide and sales assistant in XPeng stores from early 2027. No price or production capacity has been given. A plan, not yet a product.
Xiaomi is testing its own CyberOne humanoid inside its electric-vehicle factory and showed it at IFA 2026 in Berlin, where it interacted with visitors. The company says success on one nut-fastening task rose from about 90% to 98% over roughly four months. That is a single controlled task and a company number we could not verify. No price, product or sales plan has been announced.
Glasses are the breakout form: Meta, Samsung, Alibaba and a crop of smaller makers are all shipping or about to. Pendants and recorders are the cheap, awkward middle, rings are brand new, and OpenAI's own device is not due before 2027. The graveyard is just as real as the momentum: one well-funded product (Humane) is dead, and two more startups (Bee and Limitless) were absorbed by Big Tech. Use the filter below, and read the status line on every card before betting on one. Each "Our read" chip is based on research, not hands-on testing.
At Connect 2026 Meta widened its glasses lineup and said Muse, its new personal AI agent, is coming to all of them. Muse launched September 8 in the Meta AI app and on the web (US, Canada, Mexico): it can browse, fill in forms, and make purchases after asking approval. It is not on the glasses yet — Meta gave no firm date, and press reports say voice use on glasses is expected within months, US only. Also shown: a $1,299 VR glasses model shipping spring 2027, and a pocket "Muse Charm" device (no price or date confirmed). This is the best-funded wearable-AI push on the market, but the agent-in-your-glasses part is still a promise.
A cheap AI pendant that listens to your day and turns it into notes, summaries, and to-dos. Started as an independent startup, acquired by Amazon in July 2025 — one of the few AI wearables that survived by being bought rather than folding. Under Amazon it has added email and calendar actions, daily insights, voice notes and summary templates.
Samsung's answer to Ray-Ban Meta, built on Google's Android XR platform with Qualcomm silicon — the first real Google/Samsung challenge to Meta's head start in AI glasses. Samsung has shown the glasses and says only that they go on sale later this year. SamMobile (Oct 1) reports a November launch, and the Korea Herald reportedly puts the US price at $349 to $499; Samsung has confirmed neither. Reported features: camera, speakers and mics, Gemini voice help, and close ties to Galaxy phones.
The cautionary tale of this category. Humane's screenless AI Pin launched to huge hype in 2023 at $699 plus a monthly subscription; by February 2025 the company shut its servers off entirely, leaving every device non-functional, and sold its IP and software team to HP for $116M — explicitly excluding the hardware business. Worth knowing before betting on any new AI-wearable startup's longevity.
Still nominally on sale, but treat with caution: as of late 2025, credible reporting found employees hadn't been reliably paid since mid-2025, staff were on strike, and a planned India expansion had collapsed, with a rescue funding round reported as "signed but not closed." The company said only three of its 26 employees were striking and that a funding round was about to close. We couldn't confirm a formal shutdown or any later update on pay, so its financial health is still unclear — don't assume long-term support. In February 2026 Rabbit said it is building a "cyberdeck" for vibe coding with Teenage Engineering; no price or date has been given.
Alibaba's answer to Ray-Ban Meta. The S1 has a monochrome green display for translation, navigation and payments; the 40 g G1 drops the display. They launched in mainland China in November 2025 with no overseas release at the time; in 2026 Alibaba showed a Qwen-powered pair at MWC and, per a source, is preparing global lines including AI rings and earphones. Rivals in China include Xiaomi (1,999 yuan), Rokid and Baidu. Prices are launch prices converted from yuan.
The anti-Meta pair: 36 g glasses with a small green text display in each lens and no camera or speakers, aimed at notes, teleprompter text, maps and live translation. Processing happens on your phone. Hands-on reviewers liked how normal they look; the price is steep for a camera-less pair and audio replies are missing. An optional R1 smart ring pairs with it.
Display-equipped AI glasses with a 12 MP camera, dual MicroLED displays for translation, maps and transcription, and ChatGPT-based AI. They were crowdfunded on Kickstarter at launch. Our source is from September 2025 and gave no shipping date, so we could not confirm current availability or regions. Check the vendor before ordering.
The most practical AI recorder in 2026 roundups: clip or wear it, press to record a meeting or call, and get a transcript and summary. It records only when you tell it to, which sidesteps the always-on privacy problem. The catch is the subscription — over two years the Pro plan brings the cost to roughly $380 and Unlimited to about $660, per one review's math.
An open-source AI pendant you can wear or clip. Open code and a free tier are the draw. Always-on recording and a privacy policy that says audio may be kept are the cautions, so read what it stores before relying on it. A comparison site that sells a competitor checked its price on Oct 2, 2026; treat figures as approximate.
An AI "companion" necklace that listens all day and texts you comments. Pre-orders opened in 2024, ship dates slipped, and units started reaching buyers in late 2025. Early reviews are mixed: people who like the companion idea find it charming, while productivity-minded reviewers say it does not do what they wanted. It records ambient audio, including bystanders, with no audible consent signal.
A $99 always-on pendant that transcribed and summarized your day. Meta acquired Limitless in December 2025 and stopped selling the pendant; support is expected to run through roughly late 2026. A reminder that a gadget's future depends on the company behind it.
A ring with a microphone that you tap and whisper into to dictate notes or talk to an AI, billed as a "mouse for voice." It records only when you press the sensor and lasts about a day per charge. Preorders were open with shipping planned for summer 2026; we could not confirm that it has started delivering.
OpenAI's first hardware, designed with Jony Ive's team after OpenAI bought his startup io. A February 2026 report on court filings says it will not ship before the end of February 2027, slipping from the original plan to ship in 2026, and that OpenAI will not use the name "io" after a trademark suit. Reported as pocket-sized, contextually aware and screen-free. Everything beyond that is leaks.
List prices in US dollars for the things you can actually order or reserve, on a log scale so a $50 pendant and a $41,000 humanoid fit on one chart. Color shows status.
Enterprise robots (Figure, Agility, Apptronik, UBTech, AgiBot, Galbot) don't publish prices, so they aren't here. Unitree prices are from a US reseller's guide (Aug 2026), not an official list. Meta Adventurer, Audio and Alibaba prices are launch prices; Alibaba's is converted from yuan. Samsung and OpenAI have no announced price.
"Funded" and "shipping" are two very different things in this category. Here's what each status on this page stands for.
In production use — the robot is doing real, ongoing work today, not a one-time demo. Agility Robotics' Digit and Figure AI's Figure 03 qualify in the West; China's UBTech, AgiBot and Unitree report far larger delivery counts, though many units go to education and research.
Enterprise pilots — deployed at one or more real customer sites to test performance, but not yet a standard, repeatable product.
Consumer preorders open — you can put down money today, but the product may not ship to you for months. 1X's NEO is the only humanoid robot in that state right now.
Announced, not yet shipping — a company has confirmed the product and a rough timeline, but it isn't in customers' hands yet.
Discontinued — confirmed dead: the company shut it down, or shut off the servers that made it work. Humane's AI Pin is the clearest example — the devices are physically intact but non-functional.
Status uncertain — credible signs of financial distress, but no confirmed shutdown. We flag it as a caution, not a verdict — Rabbit R1 is the example here.
"Physical AI" gets used as one label, but humanoid robotics and wearable AI are running on completely different timelines and economics.
1. Robot "brains" vs. robot hardware — some companies build the physical machine (Figure AI, Boston Dynamics, Apptronik, Agility Robotics, 1X, Sanctuary AI); Physical Intelligence builds only the foundation model that other robots run on. Increasingly, hardware and "brain" are separate businesses, not one vertically integrated company.
2. Industrial-first vs. home-first — most humanoid robots today are built and funded for warehouses and factories (Digit, Apollo, Figure 03), where the economics of replacing repetitive manual labor are already provable. 1X's NEO is the first serious bet on the home instead — a much harder, less proven market.
3. Passive wearables vs. agentic wearables — older AI wearables mostly recorded and transcribed (Bee's original pitch). Meta's Muse agent, launched in September 2026 and promised for its glasses, is the first mainstream attempt to put an AI agent that plans and acts, not just listens, on your face — a real step up in what the hardware is expected to do, once it ships there.
4. Screenless vs. display-equipped — Humane's AI Pin bet on a screenless, voice-and-laser-projector interface and lost. Meta's newer Display glasses ($799) and Samsung's Android XR glasses both bet the opposite way — a small display matters enough to pay for.
5. Capital-intensive vs. consumer-priced — robotics funding rounds run in the hundreds of millions to billions of dollars (Figure AI's $1B+ round, Apptronik's $520M, Agility's planned $2.5B SPAC listing). Wearables ship at consumer prices ($49.99–$799) but depend on genuine volume to work economically.
6. Big rounds vs. big shipments — US makers (Figure, Apptronik, Agility) lead on funding and enterprise pilots; Chinese makers (AgiBot, Unitree, UBTech) lead on units shipped and are listing on stock exchanges. Shipments are not the same as useful work, so look at what the robots actually do.
It's easy to find humanoid-robot demo videos. It's harder to find robots doing real, ongoing, paid work. Here's what's actually confirmed.
Agility Robotics' Digit — working ongoing shifts for customers including GXO, Schaeffler, Toyota Canada and Mercado Libre, primarily moving totes and handling cases in logistics. Agility reports 65,000+ operating hours across nine customer sites. The clearest example of a humanoid-style robot in sustained, repeatable production use.
Figure AI's Figure 03 — Figure 02 worked at BMW's Spartanburg plant for about eleven months (Figure says 90,000+ parts loaded), and Figure 03 returned there in June 2026 after a retail distribution-center deal in Reno was signed in May. These are company-reported figures; Figure has not published the same independently verifiable shift detail as Agility.
Apptronik's Apollo — in pilots with Mercedes-Benz, GXO and Jabil, ramping toward production after its $520M raise in February 2026. Production numbers haven't been disclosed.
Boston Dynamics' Atlas — a production version was unveiled in January 2026, with first units going to Hyundai and Google DeepMind and Hyundai's plant rollout planned from 2028. It is not yet sold to outside customers the way its quadruped Spot has been for years.
China's UBTech, AgiBot and Unitree — UBTech reports 921 full-size humanoids shipped in the first half of 2026 for factory sorting, transport and inspection, but 96.4% of that revenue is custom industrial projects. AgiBot and Unitree ship the most robots by count; a large share of Unitree's go to education, research and performances. Delivered is not the same as doing paid work every day.
Most of this category is enterprise-only. A short list of things an individual can actually purchase today.
Wearables, shipping now: Meta's glasses start at $249 (Meta Adventurer, on sale from Oct 23); Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 is $449 and the Display model is $799. Muse is coming to them but is not on the glasses yet. Bee's AI pendant is $49.99. These are real consumer products, not preorders.
Home robot, preorder only: 1X's NEO takes early-access orders at $20,000 outright, or $499/month as a subscription. It's the only humanoid robot an individual can put money down on — but we haven't found a confirmed customer delivery yet.
AI recorders and pendants: Plaud's NotePin S is $179 and records only when you press it, but heavy use needs a paid plan ($99.99–$239.99 a year). Omi is $179 list and open source; Friend is $99 with no subscription but mixed reviews. Limitless is discontinued.
A robot you can actually buy: Unitree sells directly to individuals and institutions. A US reseller lists the compact R1 humanoid from $6,870, the G1 from $21,600 and the full-size H2 at $40,900 (reseller prices, not official; shipping and add-ons extra). Most buyers are schools and labs, not households.
Five things actually separate the companies likely to still exist in three years from the ones that won't.
Production vs. demo — is the robot doing repeatable, ongoing work (Digit) or appearing in polished videos (most humanoid robots, still)? Ask for the former, specifically.
Funding runway and backers — a $1B+ round (Figure AI) or a strategic industrial backer (Hyundai/Boston Dynamics, Mercedes-Benz and Google/Apptronik) buys years of runway. A single unclear round doesn't.
Payroll and morale signals — Rabbit R1's reported unpaid staff and strikes in late 2025 were a warning sign well before any formal shutdown. Public reporting on a company's internal health is worth checking, not just its product page.
What happens if it shuts down — Humane's AI Pin became a paperweight the moment its servers went dark, because the product depended entirely on the company's cloud. Ask whether a device keeps working, in any form, if the company doesn't.
Hardware maker vs. model maker — Physical Intelligence doesn't sell a robot at all; it licenses a foundation model to companies that do. Know which layer of the stack you're actually evaluating.
A device designed to listen or watch continuously raises real questions — for the wearer and for everyone around them.
AI glasses and pendants that listen or record by default can capture other people without their knowledge or consent — check local recording-consent laws before using one in conversation with others. Review what each device actually stores, for how long, and whether recordings are processed on-device or sent to a company's servers. And weigh the Humane AI Pin precedent seriously: a cloud-dependent wearable stops working the moment the company behind it does, taking any stored data and functionality with it.
Expect the "brain vs. hardware" split to sharpen — more robot makers will license foundation models (from companies like Physical Intelligence) rather than build their own from scratch, the way most car companies don't build their own engines from raw research. Humanoid robots will keep expanding from logistics into more specialized industrial roles before any serious home rollout beyond 1X's early NEO cohort. And wearable AI's center of gravity has clearly shifted from passive recording toward active agents like Muse — expect Meta's competitors to answer with agent-equipped glasses of their own well before 2027, not just cheaper cameras.