Feather, an East Palo Alto robotics startup, is selling a two-armed humanoid on wheels as a platform for outside developers rather than a closed system for factories. It is aimed at teams working on physical AI, AI that senses and acts in the real world through machines such as robots and self-driving cars. The company lists the platform starting at $29,990 on feather.dev, and an update from investor Seed Innovations says Gradient Ventures led a $7.6 million pre-seed round. At that price, small labs could buy a complete two-armed mobile robot instead of assembling one from industrial parts.
The robot rolls on wheels rather than walking on two legs like Tesla's Optimus. Feather says its base can move in any direction, turns 360 degrees and travels up to 1.3 meters per second, with about 1 meter of reach and 600 mm of up-and-down travel. Two batteries that can be swapped without shutting the robot down give about 10 hours of work, the company says. Its grippers and onboard computers are modular. Feather also offers an open software kit for Python and ROS2, with teleop, a person steering the robot remotely, as with a remote control, plus tools for working out arm movements, checking for collisions and linking to simulation software.
According to a news report, Feather's founders are Hoa Mai, formerly of Kind Humanoid and later 1X, and Parsa Bakhtiari, who worked on Tesla's Model 3. Seed Innovations' Sept. 25 update repeats Feather's Sept. 24 announcement: a pre-seed round led by Gradient, with Builder Capital, Geometry, Seed Innovations and Virgo VC taking part, made through a SAFE, an agreement that turns an investment into shares later. Seed Innovations says its $1.0 million will convert into shares at the next qualifying funding round or a liquidity event such as a sale, subject to a $60 million cap on the valuation used for that conversion.
Feather pitches the robot as hardware for developers, closer to an Android-style platform that others build on than a robot made for a single job. The company says it built a first prototype in two months, filled its first order within nine months and has already booked more than $1 million in revenue, with early use in cooking and lab settings and AI models from Nvidia, Skild and Physical Intelligence in the mix.
Feather's announcement compares its $29,990 price with higher list prices for Unitree's H2 Edu, Agibot's G2 and Dexmate's Vega; those comparisons are Feather's own. It is not yet clear how many developers will keep paying for the platform, whether the new funding will build a real market for outside developers' apps, or whether its revenue figure will be confirmed beyond the company's own statements.