If there is one thing robotics founders and investors agree on, it’s that the “ChatGPT moment” where a general-purpose robot can seamlessly adapt to any environment has not arrived. Opinions vary on whether the breakthrough is just around the corner or a decade away. Feather Robotics, a humanoid startup founded last year, is developing a robot for either timeline.
Unlike Tesla or Figure, which are tackling the lofty mission of building both the body and a foundational “brain” that isn’t yet widely deployed, Feather provides the hardware and software toolkit for developers to tackle real-world tasks now. Hardware players like Nvidia or Apple started with a product that worked and was deployable, and then they added complexity over time.” In 2025, after selling his previous humanoid startup to 1X, Mai (pictured above, left) teamed up with Parsa Bakhtiari (pictured above, right), a former Tesla Model 3 engineer who at one point reported directly to Elon Musk, to build what the duo hopes will become the Android of robotics. That vision was attractive to Gradient Ventures, which backed Feather at its inception, leading the startup’s previously announced $7.6 million pre-seed round.
Since then, Feather has rolled out a modular robotic system that allows developers to customize the hardware for different use cases, such as adjusting arm lengths. The startup has already begun selling to customers, surpassing $1 million in revenue. Although Feather is not disclosing its customers, it said that its robots are working as cooks in restaurants in Japan and cleaning up science labs.
On the software side, the hardware can run models from any leading robotics AI provider, including Generalist, Skild, or Physical Intelligence. According to Darian Shirazi, general partner at Gradient, Feather doesn’t have direct competitors in the U.S. He breaks down the current hardware robotics landscape into three categories: startups like Sunday building domestic household robots, heavyweights like Figure and Tesla aiming for general-purpose machines, and Feather, which, he believes, is the only U.S. startup developing a modular humanoid platform.
Mai admits that Feather took a page from Chinese robotics companies like Unitree. But with new foreign-made models restricted from entering the U.S. market, Feather is now uniquely positioned as a homegrown option of its kind. Feather’s other advantage is its price.
The robot costs $30,000, which is about half the price Unitree’s H2 Edu. Shirazi believes the market size at that price could be very large. They’d have to have all these different support mechanisms,” he said.
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