This is the new AI hype in Silicon Valley. Do you want to get on board?
Pull a shirt out of the laundry pile, smooth it, fold the shirt, halve it, halve it again, gently form it into a square and stack it in the drawer. How many times do you repeat this process each week? Can you assign a robot that costs a few thousand dollars to handle the routine?
In the backyard of my Palo Alto home in the heart of Silicon Valley, I saw what the future might look like.
Tech startup Syncere has organized the event to showcase a lamp-shaped robot. Engineers, founders and investors were in attendance.
Physical artificial intelligence, the field of building AI systems to perform tasks in the real world, is attracting a surge of investor interest. And the enthusiasm has flowed directly into the age-old chore of folding laundry. Almost every top humanoid robotics company has launched a robot that can fold laundry. The G1, a 4-foot 3-inch robot made by Chinese company Unitree, can fold clothes and handle other tasks. American company Figure AI, whose robot walked the red carpet with first lady Melania Trump, is also training its model to fold clothes. San Francisco startup Weave Robotics is shipping Isaac 0, a robot designed specifically to fold laundry, for $8,000 or a $450 monthly subscription.
Folding laundry seems like the perfect task to bring cutting-edge robotics to the mass market. While robots have challenges to overcome, consumers see their appeal.
You’ll need a pair of Syncere’s Lume lamps to fold clothes properly. At $3,500 for two, they spend less than their competitors. One investor at the event told me he was more interested in buying one for his home than buying shares in the company. Others I spoke to expressed similar interest. Syncere’s co-founder, Aaron Tan, isn’t concerned about price. Premium designer lamps, he pointed out, can sell for more than $2,000.
According to 2024 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American spends five hours a month doing laundry. Let’s say half of that time is spent folding laundry. That means you’ll pay $60 to $180 an hour to fold clothes by buying a loom or Isaac for two years of use. I can pay a laundromat near me $30 an hour for the same job.
How much would you pay for your laundry folding service?
Even if you can afford the loom, there’s a problem. A pile of t-shirts of similar sizes, weights and materials, the evening demo went smoothly. But when the robot tried to fold clothes, including a shirt, a lightweight undergarment and a sweater, as guests volunteered, it failed.
Folding fabrics is technically challenging. As my colleague Kevin Schall said, even a leading AI robotics researcher doesn’t know when a laundry-folding robot will become a viable product.
But these AI robots are selling. Tan said his company has received more than 1,000 orders. He said you buy the lamp only once. Customers who purchase from the initial batches will receive lifetime software updates that improve the lamp’s performance as the user collects data and refines its model.
As the demo continued, it became clear that Syncere and other AI robotics companies weren’t selling a robot that would fold your laundry. They sell a promise to fold your clothes – delivered in the future. It’s a similar promise that every AI company is promoting: a guarantee of improved productivity and social change, just not there yet.
Would you buy a laundry-folding robot even if it doesn’t fold your clothes well?
During a recent taxi ride, my Lyft driver said she had been living in San Francisco for the past year, but rising rents had pushed her out. She moves to the very cheap East Bay and lives with a roommate. He complained about the growing number of Waymo cars in the city.
“Robots are supposed to do what humans can’t, right?” she asked me. “So why are they changing us?”
Home robots are waiting for their Waymo moment. It’s not hard to imagine a future where a laundry-folding lamp works, for what a lamp costs, and a small subscription fee. I happily pay and hand over my fitted sheets and random sized socks to my bed maid.
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