In 2017, Jeff Bezos made a bold bet. As a fan of science fiction and robotics, Bezos firmly believed that consumers would soon have robots in their homes.
The founder of Amazon, who was also the CEO at the time, instructed a group of senior executives in charge of core company technologies to work on creating a household robot. A few years later, the team launched the Astro, which was priced at $1,450.
The public first saw Astro at Amazon's fall 2021 press conference. It is essentially a Alexa tablet mounted on wheels, capable of navigating autonomously within a home, recognizing faces, and serving as a mobile security monitoring device.
However, this product never went beyond the scope of being sold through an invitation-only system. Astro was only sold to a few thousand customers, and some of them now believe that the days of this robot are numbered. In 2023, Amazon also launched an Astro version for businesses, but they discontinued this product in less than a year.
Despite the setbacks faced by Astro, Amazon has not given up on Bezos' dream of home robots.
In the past few months, the company has formed a new team that is developing a "completely new robot product for the world," which is the conclusion drawn from the analysis of recruitment information by CNBC.
A recently published, later deleted engineer recruitment announcement stated: "Robots are about to step out of the movies and into our homes." The job description mentioned that this product is capable of navigating in a "dynamic home environment" and "operating autonomously alongside family members."
Amazon is known for making long-term bets. Even if it may take risks in the short term due to "misunderstandings," the company is willing to do so as long as it can gain a first-mover advantage in new markets, just as it did with its Alexa voice assistant or Kindle e-readers back in the day.
In his latest annual letter to shareholders, CEO Andy Gassie also reminded investors to pay attention to this strategy. He stated that artificial intelligence and robotics are "one of the greatest turning points of our generation."
Jiaxi wrote, "We strive to predict what will make customers' lives easier and more beautiful every day, and to invent the next turning point."
Analysts also predict that the humanoid robot market will experience significant growth in the coming years. In a report in January of this year, Barclays forecasted that the global market, currently valued at around $2 billion to $3 billion, could reach approximately $40 billion by 2035; under "the most optimistic scenario," it could even soar to as high as $200 billion.
According to LinkedIn, earlier this year, Amazon reorganized most of the members of the Astro team and brought in a robotics scholar from MIT to participate in the home robot project.
The company also accelerated this effort through a notable acquisition.
In March, Amazon acquired Fauna Robotics, which is headquartered in New York. The company created a humanoid robot named Sprout that stands 3.5 feet tall. At that time, Amazon stated that Fauna would be incorporated into a new department called Personal Robotics Group.
Some employees of Personal Robotics Group previously worked in Amazon's Lab126 R&D department. Lab126 has created several of Amazon's most successful consumer hardware products, such as the Kindle e-reader, Echo smart speaker, Fire TV, and Fire Tablet; however, it was also involved in one of Amazon's biggest failed products, Fire Phone.
It is not yet clear what kind of household robot the team is developing, or what tasks it will be capable of handling. However, a job posting in June suggests that the company is striving to "create robots that are not only powerful but also enjoyable to use."
Amazon may be considering transforming the Fauna robot to be suitable for home or commercial scenarios. The Sprout humanoid robot is designed to be “friendly and capable,” and comes with expressive yellow eyebrows, mainly for use by developers as well as commercial and academic researchers.
An employment announcement released by Amazon in October described a position for a "Field Support Engineer" responsible for customer support and on-site repairs; another recruitment is seeking a User Experience Designer to "define what it's like to live together with the Fauna robot."
The recruitment announcement states: "Our goal is simple: to create robots that people truly want to live and interact with in our everyday human spaces."
An Amazon spokesperson, Brad Glasser, told CNBC in a statement that the company acquired Fauna because it is "dedicated to solving the challenges that can unleash the potential of the personal robot category."
Glasser said, "We are optimistic about such a future: personal robots will help people in meaningful ways in their daily lives, and we intend to play an important role in making this future a reality."
Glasser pointed out that there is still a significant gap between the capabilities that can be achieved in controlled laboratories and those that can be achieved in environments such as living rooms or lobbies. Amazon is working with the robotics community to address these challenges, he said.
Emily Lugo Velez has been using Astro at her home in North Carolina since 2023. Lugo Velez used to work in IT, and now runs an artificial intelligence consulting business. She said that she and her husband didn't mind the price tag of over $1,000 for this robot and quickly joined the waiting list.
“We spent a lot of money on this thing,” said the 52-year-old Lugo Velez in an interview. “I think we’ll just have to keep it, let it break down all over the house, and then throw it into the trash.”
She said that she still uses this device to check on her pets and household appliances when she goes out. But apart from that, Astro has mainly become a party gimmick and a “stumbling block.”
She said that most of the time, she would put Astro back on the charging dock.
Executives who participated in the Astro project discussed adding robotic arms to it, enabling it to pick up and inspect items without causing damage, thereby enhancing its capabilities. This was stated by Ken Washington, who later became Vice President of Amazon's Consumer Robotics division in 2023.
He told CNBC that he had pushed for the company to develop bipedal robots, but the management was not in agreement.
“We had Jeff [Bezos] do the demonstration and review, and I was always paying attention to his body language,” said Washington. “I think he was disappointed with the functional shortcomings, but I believe he was impressed by its ability to map and navigate unknown spaces under various lighting conditions.”
Despite the many challenges faced by Astro, Amazon still has a profound accumulation in the field of robotics.
In 2012, the company acquired Kiva Systems for $775 million, introducing mobile robots into its vast fulfillment network. Since then, the scale of Amazon's warehousing automation has expanded rapidly, with the number of robots in its facilities exceeding one million units. These robots are capable of picking, sorting, and delivering goods to employees.
But the family environment presents unique challenges for robots.
"Home is a completely different environment," said the chairman of the robotics industry trade organization Association for Advancing Automation Jeff Burnstein. He has been in the robotics industry for 45 years. "Children, pets, grandparents, stairs... No two homes are exactly the same, so this represents a more challenging environment for robots, especially for walking robots."
Colin Angle, co-founder and former CEO of iRobot, stated that since the tools for building robots have "made rapid progress" in the past few years, Amazon may be more fortunate this time.
Amazon attempted to acquire iRobot in 2022, but gave up on the deal two years later due to increased regulatory obstacles.
Angle said, "The tools that the Astro team had at that time were like sticks with nails; they were incredibly primitive. It's hard to overstate how much the robotics industry has changed in the past two years."
Advances in key mechanical components such as artificial intelligence models, sensors, battery systems, and actuators have fueled a new wave of development in industrial and consumer robots.
Since 2021, Elon Musk's Tesla has been developing its bipedal robots. Startups such as Apptronik, Boston Dynamics, China's Yushu Technology, Figure, and 1X are also working on humanoid robots. Agility Robotics is a manufacturer of bipedal robots, and Amazon is also one of its supporters; the company went public on SPAC on Thursday.
PitchBook data shows that in the first half of this year, venture capital firms invested $33.4 billion in robotics and physical AI companies, while for the entire year of 2025, this figure is expected to be $28.7 billion.
Most humanoid robots are targeted at the manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare industries, but an increasing number of companies are trying to develop robots for households.
It is reported that Apple is advancing multiple home robot projects, including a desktop device similar to a Pixar lamp. Hugging Face released Microduck in August for $399; NVIDIA agreed to acquire the company for nearly $13 billion in September. Angle founded a startup in May to develop plush companion robots named Familiar Machines and Magic. Companies such as Sunday, Tau, and Nori claim that their robots can help with tasks like folding clothes and clearing the dining table, but most of these products are still in the prototype stage or are considered niche devices.
“[ Astro ] is so ahead of its time,” said Washington, “It’s taking such a giant leap that I feel we have a right to claim the family scenario for ourselves.”
A former Amazon employee who participated in the Astro project and requested anonymity to speak frankly about it stated that the limited functions of the robot, combined with a price tag of over $1,000, likely make it unacceptable to many consumers.
“Our poor little Astro cost around $2,000 when it was launched, which is no small amount,” said this former employee. “For consumers, that’s a significant sum of money, yet what they want is a robot that can do many things.”
Glasser indicates that Amazon takes a long-term perspective on new markets such as personal robots and values the benefits that can be obtained as an early entrant.
He added that the original intention of designing Astro was to help Amazon build capabilities and focus on its ambitions. The company has applied a lot of the experience, talent, and knowledge gained from the Astro project to other robotics initiatives.
In the Facebook group for Astro car owners, users are complaining about the deterioration of customer service and that Amazon's AIexa + artificial intelligence assistant does not support Astro.
Some users believe based on this that Astro may be discontinued. Others are trying to sell their devices at a discount on eBay and Facebook Marketplace.
Glasser says that Amazon is still continuing to provide support for Astro customers.
Astro, who lives near Tucson, Arizona, stated that over the past four years, he has felt that he has gotten value for his money from this device. If it could do more things, such as helping with household chores, he would welcome another robot into his home.
“Astro costed $1000, and its functions are quite limited, but if it could bring me a drink or wipe the furniture for me, I would be interested in such a device,” said 65-year-old Martin. “I think that day is not far off.”
