Amazon builds new home robot team around walking humanoid Sprout

Amazon’s $1,450 Astro robot was basically a tablet mounted on wheels. It never managed to leave invite-only limbo, found its way into just a few thousand homes, and proved that a wheeled screen gets tripped up by everyday rugs and stairs.

So Amazon is changing the form factor. If wheels cannot conquer the living room, maybe legs can.

Amazon is rebuilding its home robotics division around a newly formed Personal Robotics Group and has acquired Fauna Robotics, the startup behind a 3.5-foot bipedal humanoid named Sprout, CNBC reports.

From rolling tablets to walking humanoids

Fauna’s flagship creation, Sprout, stands roughly waist-high. Unlike Astro, which was chained to flat flooring, Sprout can walk, grip items, dance, and hold natural conversations.

Before the acquisition, Fauna was pitching Sprout to research laboratories for around $50,000 a pop, with Disney among its early roster of customers.

Now, the startup has been folded into Amazon’s Personal Robotics Group. The team also incorporates hardware veterans from Lab126, the lab behind the Kindle and Echo, alongside transferred engineers from the Astro team and MIT roboticist Luca Carlone.

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the purchase, noting the company is committed to tackling the core challenges required to finally unlock the personal robotics category.

Bouncing back from two home hardware dead ends

This aggressive reboot makes sense when you look at Amazon's rocky history with home automation.

Astro launched in 2021 with grand promises, but a wheeled base that cannot climb stairs or fold laundry quickly felt like an overpriced novelty. Meanwhile, Amazon’s backup plan to dominate home floors was dashed in January 2024, when regulatory scrutiny from the EU killed its planned acquisition of Roomba maker iRobot, leaving Amazon with a hefty $94 million breakup fee.

Amazon has not abandoned smaller mobile devices entirely. Ring just unveiled the $1,000 Rover Cam and a $250 indoor Drone Cam for automated home security patrols. But for true general-purpose household assistance, Amazon is clearly shifting its long-term bet to humanoids.

Why it matters

For regular consumers, do not expect a walking robotic butler on Amazon Prime anytime soon. A $50,000 research platform is miles away from mass affordability, and making walking bipeds safe around toddlers and pets remains an immense hurdle.

For the tech industry, however, Amazon's pivot proves that big tech is moving past the tablet-on-wheels phase. Service robots without functional arms or the ability to step over clutter hit a hard ceiling.

We think combining Fauna’s robotics software with Lab126 is a smart pairing. Fauna brings agile manipulation and dynamic movement, while Lab126 understands how to aggressively scale supply chains and drive down bill-of-materials costs.

Still, shifting from wheels straight to bipedal humanoids is a massive technological leap. Turning a fragile lab robot into a durable, affordable household appliance will be one of the toughest hardware bets Amazon has ever taken.