Weave’s $8,000 Robot Finally Folds Your Laundry

Weave Robotics opened preorders this month for Isaac 1, a home robot designed to sort laundry, make beds and tidy rooms. Customers can buy it outright for $7,999 or pay $449 a month, with a refundable $250 preorder deposit, according to Weave’s product page. California deliveries begin this fall, with broader U.S. availability through 2027.

The robot rolls on a wheeled base rather than legs, rising to 5 feet 9 inches when working, and uses two arms to handle clothing, bedding and clutter. It builds on Weave’s first product, Isaac 0, a stationary laundry-folder launched in February that has logged more than 2,000 hours in the field, the company said.

Isaac 1’s price looks reasonable only next to the competition. 1X Technologies’ Neo, a bipedal home humanoid, costs $20,000 outright or $499 a month, according to 1X’s order page. Isaac 1 undercuts that price by using wheels instead of legs, avoiding the costly actuators bipedal robots need, Tech Times reported. Even so, $7,999 upfront or $449 a month remains a major expense for most households.

That gap between “affordable by robotics standards” and “affordable for most households” is the real story. Home robot prices generally start around $19,000 and climb past $100,000. That range has kept robots out of reach the way phones and appliances never were. Isaac 1 sits below that market, but it’s still priced like a major appliance or a used car, not an everyday purchase.

A Subscription May Be Better Than Owning

Weave and 1X aren’t alone in betting that a monthly payment will move more robots than a five-figure price tag. In China, AGIBOT launched a rental platform called Sharebot in December to sidestep the ownership barrier entirely. Customers there can rent a humanoid for as low as $517 a day, including a human operator on-site, and the platform logged more than 5,500 orders in its first three months. AGIBOT projects the rental market could reach $1.5 billion by the end of 2026.

Early rental demand is coming from corporate events, retail promotions and livestreamed content. That’s a different market than Weave and 1X are chasing, but the economics rhyme. Renting turns a large, uncertain purchase into a smaller recurring one, the same shift that turned software into a subscription business.

A subscription lowers the barrier to entry, turning a major purchase into a recurring bill, closer to a car lease than an appliance sale. Subscriptions also let robotics companies keep control of the hardware, push updates to every unit at once, and lower the upfront commitment for buyers uncertain a robot can reliably do chores it has never done before. For consumers, a home robot could become another line item in a monthly budget rather than a one-time purchase.

Isaac 1 Isn’t Fully Autonomous Yet

Isaac 1 runs autonomously by default, but Weave said “teleoperation assistance” steps in when its AI can’t finish a task alone, meaning a Weave employee can remotely view live camera feeds inside a customer’s home to help. For Isaac 0, Weave has confirmed specialists see only the head and wrist camera feeds needed for a correction, with no audio collected, but the company has declined to say whether that footage trains its AI, Tech Times reported.

For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.