Meet Amazon's $50,000 Robot - Inside Big Tech's Humanoid Takeover

Hi to everyone watching on Cheddar, great to be here. What stands three and a half feet tall, cleans up your mess, and can challenge you to a dance-off? It's Sprout. Priced at $50,000, it may be the most ambitious developer platform in humanoid robotics today. I can walk, wave, dance, and help with tasks under guidance. Right now, I'm in the office, hosting a team from Cheddar News for an interview. Sprout is the first robot from New York startup Fauna Robotics, and it was just acquired by Amazon. It's the latest investment from big tech into the world of humanoid companions. Recently, Meta snapped up startup Assured Robot Intelligence, advancing its own humanoid ambitions. Even Google and Microsoft, Silicon Valley's major players, are all moving fast. In this episode of NYC Innovates, we'll dive into big tech's race to put a humanoid companion inside your home. We'll meet the New York City startup that's already shipping one, and ask the big question, what happens next? We really like that dynamic of robots that you can grow up or grow old with, that you establish a relationship with over time. When most people hear humanoid robot, they picture something intimidating and mechanical. Think Boston Dynamics' Atlas or Tesla's Optimus. But Fauna Robotics is actually betting on the opposite, something more friendly and familiar. I think emotionally, you know, everything from Rosie Jetson, WALL-E, Baymax, R2-D2, these robots that have existed in science fiction and kind of lived in our imaginations for a long time, were always a source of inspiration. And much more than, you know, the images of Westworld and Terminator might be the kind of counterpoints of exactly what we don't want to be doing. When you address it by name, you say, hey Sprout, it will wake up and you might see its eyebrows flick up. You'll see the lights around its face start to animate. And those eyebrows will remain kind of flickering and the lights on anytime while it's listening. Can you go to the kitchen and check for paper towels and then come back here and tell me if you saw any? What lies under Sprout's soft exterior is highly sophisticated. Sprout runs AI models using a powerful onboard NVIDIA processor. The system can map and navigate environments autonomously, pick up and move objects, respond to voice commands, and plan multi-step tasks on the fly. It features a swappable three-hour battery, the ability for teleoperation, robust grippers, and weighs in at 50 pounds. I found a roll of white paper towels on the kitchen counter back at my starting point now. We do a lot of work in simulation to train behaviors that we can then translate onto the robot hardware. And this relates to, you know, how the robot can stand up from the ground, walk around, how it can learn a dance. Today, Fauna is launching Sprout not as a consumer product, not yet, but as a developer platform. We really started with the premise that humanoid robotics today is like the very early innings of the personal computing industry. And so in that same vein, you have a very passionate group, but small group of builders and developers who are working on robots. But what they haven't had to date is a robot that's really easy to iterate, build on, extend. And if you think about how this might develop over time, you can see people contributing to a set of applications and ways robots are actually working out in real world spaces. Sprout carries a hefty price tag of $50,000, but that's squarely aimed at research labs and corporate R&D budgets. We do know that to really build a successful product and people can and are excited to engage with, we have to bring that price down. And so I think a lot of focus on manufacturing and capabilities development should get us there. Out of the box, the platform comes bundled with a software development kit and support for connecting whatever large language model you prefer. And the partnerships are coming in fast. Disney is working with Fauna Robotics to explore character-based experiences, while research groups at NYU and other university labs are already working on everything from long horizon task planning to dexterous manipulation. Is humanity ready to coexist with robots? I believe so. Robots like me are designed to be safe, helpful, and respectful of human environments. As long as we continue focusing on safety, thoughtful integration, humans and robots can coexist well. What's it like living in New York City? New York City is a vibrant, fast-paced place, full of energy and innovation. It's a great environment for technology and creativity, which makes it exciting for me to be here with so many interesting people and projects. Show me some of your favorite dance moves. Now I have to admit, interacting with Sprout was a blast, but bringing a robot into my home that's equipped with cameras, microphones, and an AI reasoning engine does raise some obvious questions. Privacy matters a lot. We need to be very sensitive to how we develop and put robots in front of people and around people. We have a number of people who ask about applications in elder care, and people want to be able to check in on parents, but they don't want to have a whole home full of cameras. And so a robot that can intermittently interact in the home and beyond, but is also very clear when it's off and not operational, I think actually presents an opportunity for preserving privacy. And then there's the broader vision. Fauna Robotics was recently acquired by Amazon, the same company that already operates your smart doorbell, your voice assistant, and handles your delivery logistics. Take that one step further, and Sprout may one day answer your door. Bring your Amazon package inside and place those items around the house where they belong. Humanoids fit perfectly inside Amazon's consumer ecosystem. And they're not alone. Meta has made no secret of its ambitions in physical AI and the data advantage it's sitting on. So every interaction, every image, every video posted to Instagram and Facebook, is potential training material for machines learning how humans move through the world. Even the Meta Ray Bans, those stylish smart glasses that millions of people are already wearing, are quietly helping Meta's AI develop spatial awareness and map the sequences of human movement. The consumer products are already out there. It's the humanoids that are coming next. I think we built the very beginnings of something that could be really great and wonderful and out in the world at large scale. But bringing that to fruition, will take much more effort and focus. Amazon, who has a lot of experience in developing new technologies and putting them out in the world at scale, gives us an opportunity to really benefit from that and grow alongside them. Artificial intelligence, especially agentic AI, is the biggest shift in technology since the internet. In fact, what agents allow robotic systems to do is go from following set patterns to start making decisions. Amazon, we are very interested in, is this connection between digital and physical systems. And here's where that connection enters new territory. Kids growing up right now will be the first generation of humans ever to form early childhood memories alongside humanoid companions. I have twin boys who are three years old and they love Sprout. They come into work regularly. They talk about Sprout at home. We watch robot videos. They came in the other day and they were jumping and the robot was jumping and they were seeing who could jump higher. Kids often ask creative questions and come up with fun ways to interact, which makes every moment with them engaging and refreshing. Companies deploying these humanoid robots into homes bear a profound responsibility, not just for privacy and physical safety, but also for emotional safety. These robots mimic human empathy, which can blur the lines between reality and simulation. So once they've been integrated into our day-to-day life, what happens next? Ying Zhu is an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on designing AI technologies that promote language and literacy development. When a child interacts with a humanoid robot for the first time, what's actually happening developmentally in that moment? Developmentally, children are learning how to organize the many different objects in the world and put them into categories. And robots are tricky because they blur those boundaries. Robots can move on their own so they seem to have autonomy and they can talk, which makes them appear to have human-like capacities. So they don't fit neatly into children's usual categories. In our study, we looked at kids from four to 11, and we found that younger children tended to attribute a similar level of agency and intention to AI systems as they did to people. With humanoid robots, that persuasive power could be amplified because the interaction feels more socially embodied and emotionally engaged. Regulators and child development experts should be asking what kinds of recommendations is the robot allowed to make? Can it promote products to children? And can it collect information from children's conversations and use that information to personalize persuasion? And how transparent is the system about its commercial interests? I've talked to many child-facing AI startup companies, and many of them wanted to do things right, which is good, but just the how-to component is still very opaque. We've always taken a model of how can we build robots that support human flourishing and engagement in the real world? It pulls you away from screens and allows you to interact in the things around you, but we see it more as sidekick than primary friend, right? And so this is supportive of human relationships you might have and other interactions. So it maybe takes care of some of the day-to-day tasks that you don't want to do. It can be a companion and friend, but is more augmentative of that experience. Sprout just launched in January of this year and is actively shipping schools, parks, hotels, eldercare facilities. The company sees Sprout as a fixture in all of these places. There are a lot of opportunities to have robots in human-centric spaces. We see a lot of excitement and demand for the product we're building, and so we're very focused on kind of maturing that and getting it out to a broader audience. Now that we've addressed the robot in the room, would you let a humanoid operate inside your home or business? Let us know in the comments below. For Cheddar, I'm Chris Castellino.