CASBOT Mini sellout

A smaller humanoid robot from Beijing startup CASBOT sold out as soon as orders opened, giving the company an early test of demand below the usual six-figure price tier. (x.com) CASBOT promoted the model as the CASBOT Mini, a roughly half-sized humanoid aimed at education and research users, with an advertised price of about 29,999 yuan, or roughly $4,100 at recent exchange rates. The company also said it would provide open software development kits, or toolkits that let outside developers write apps and controls for the robot. (x.com) Humanoid robots are machines built with a head, torso, arms and legs so they can use spaces and tools designed for people. In the past year, CASBOT has mostly sold much larger systems: its CASBOT 01 stands 1.79 meters tall and weighs 60 kilograms, while the lighter CASBOT 02 was listed at 328,800 yuan on JD.com. (english.news.cn, jd.com) That price gap is the point of the Mini. A machine at 29,999 yuan sits far closer to the budgets of university labs, robotics clubs and individual developers than CASBOT’s full-size products, which have been marketed for exhibition, education and commercial service settings. (x.com, toutiao.com) CASBOT is a young company by industry standards. The brand was founded in 2023 in Beijing, and it has raised nearly 100 million yuan in angel-plus funding while pitching humanoid robots for industrial, mining and service work. (robotsinternational.com, kr-asia.com) The company’s recent public push has centered on embodied intelligence, the idea that artificial intelligence systems learn by sensing and acting through a physical body rather than only processing text or images on a screen. CASBOT executives told Chinese media last year that the company had three product lines: bipedal humanoids, wheeled embodied robots and dexterous hands. (toutiao.com) Rivals are chasing the same lower-cost developer market with smaller open platforms. Reachy Mini, for example, markets itself as an open-source desktop humanoid for developers starting at $299, showing how companies are trying to build software ecosystems before full-size household robots exist. (reachymini.net, github.com) The fast sellout does not show how many units CASBOT had available, and the company has not publicly detailed production volume in the source material tied to the launch. It does show that buyers moved quickly when a humanoid platform dropped from roughly 328,800 yuan to about 29,999 yuan and came with promises of open developer tools. (x.com, jd.com) What happens next is less about one sellout than repeat supply. If CASBOT can keep shipping Mini units and developers actually build on the software tools it advertised, the company will have a clearer case that lower-cost embodied-robot platforms can move beyond demos and into regular lab and classroom use. (x.com)