Bezos' Home-Robot Vision Lives On at Amazon After Astro Stumbles

Astro's start, limits and lessons

Jeff Bezos greenlit a consumer robot in 2017 and asked top device executives to make it real. The result was Astro, shown at Amazon's fall 2021 event as a tablet-topped, Alexa-enabled bot that can steer itself around a home, recognize faces and patrol as a mobile security monitor.

Astro never moved beyond invite-only access and reached just a few thousand customers. Amazon added a business-focused Astro in 2023, then sunset it in under a year. The company has kept pursuing the broader goal despite Astro's limited run, with roles described in job posts as work on a "new-to-world robot product."

Emily Lugo Velez, 52, has had Astro in her North Carolina house since 2023. A former IT professional who today operates an AI advisory firm, she and her husband put their names on the waitlist even with the four-figure cost. "We spent so much money on this thing," she said, noting she uses it to check pets and appliances but otherwise sees it as a party trick and a "trip hazard." Most days she sends it back to its charger.

Ken Washington, Amazon's vice president of consumer robotics until 2023, said leaders discussed adding an arm so Astro could pick up and inspect objects without breaking them, and he argued for a bipedal design that leadership rejected. "We had Jeff [Bezos] in for show and tells and reviews, and I watched his body language pretty closely," Washington said. "I think he was disappointed with the lack of functionality, but I think he was impressed with its ability to map and navigate an undefined space under all lighting conditions."

A rebuilt effort: Fauna, fresh hires and a new group

Amazon has been reconstituting its home-robot push. Over recent months, it assembled a new team to pursue that "new-to-world" device, according to a review of job listings. One now-removed post declared, "Robots are about to step out of the movies and into our homes," describing a machine that can handle "dynamic home environments" and run "autonomous operation alongside family members."

Earlier this year, Amazon reassigned much of the Astro team and added an MIT roboticist to the home-robot project, per LinkedIn profiles. Then in March, it acquired New York-based Fauna Robotics, maker of Sprout - a 3.5-foot humanoid with expressive yellow eyebrows that has primarily served developers plus commercial and academic researchers. The announcement placed Fauna within a new Personal Robotics Group.

Several team members hail from Lab126, Amazon's R&D shop responsible for products such as the Kindle e-reader, the Echo line of smart speakers, Fire TV, Fire Tablet and the ill-fated Fire Phone. A June job post pointed to a goal to "create robots that are not just functional, but delightful." October listings included a "Field Support Engineer" to support customers and on-site repairs, and a user experience designer to "define what it feels like to live with a Fauna robot." Another role spelled out the aspiration: "Our goal is simple: make robots people actually want to live and interact with in everyday human spaces."

Fauna's Sprout also made a public splash this year, demonstrating dexterity in New York on January 14, 2026 while being operated remotely. It remains unclear whether Amazon aims to adapt Fauna's technology for homes, businesses or both.

CEO Andy Jassy put the push in context in his latest annual letter, calling artificial intelligence and robotics two of the "biggest inflections of our lifetime." "We try to anticipate what will make customers' lives easier and better every day, and invent the next inflection," he wrote.

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The landscape: tougher at home, but tools are getting better

Amazon's robotics pedigree runs deep in warehouses. The 2012 purchase of Kiva Systems for $775 million seeded a fleet that has grown to more than one million robots across facilities, where they pick, sort and ferry goods to workers. But homes are messier - literally and technically.

"The home is a completely different space," said Jeff Burnstein, president of the Association for Advancing Automation, who has 45 years in the field. He pointed to kids, pets, grandparents and stairways, plus the fact that every home is arranged differently, calling it a tougher environment for robots, especially walkers.

Amazon tried to buy iRobot in 2022, then backed away two years later amid mounting regulatory pushback. Even so, iRobot co-founder and former CEO Colin Angle sees progress: tools for building robots have leapt forward in the past few years. "The toolkit that the Astro team had when they did it was clubs with nails in them, just incredibly primitive," he said. Advances in AI models, sensors, batteries and actuators are fueling a new wave of machines for factories and consumers alike.

The field is crowded. Since 2021, Tesla has been working on its two-legged robot, Optimus. Companies such as Apptronik, Boston Dynamics, China's Unitree, Figure and 1X are also pursuing humanoid machines.

Agility Robotics, which builds the bipedal Digit robot and counts Amazon among its backers, debuted on the public markets through a SPAC on Thursday. According to PitchBook, the first half of the year saw venture firms put $33.4 billion toward robotics and physical AI, compared with $28.7 billion across all of 2025.

Most humanoids target manufacturing, logistics and healthcare, but more companies are eyeing the home. Apple is reportedly exploring several home-robot concepts, including a tabletop device reminiscent of the Pixar lamp. Hugging Face released the $399 Microduck in August, and Nvidia agreed in September to acquire Hugging Face for almost $13 billion.

Angle launched Familiar Machines & Magic in May to build fuzzy companion robots. Companies such as Sunday, Tau and Nori say their devices can help with chores like folding laundry and clearing a table, though they are still mostly prototypes or niche products.

In January, Barclays pegged the current global humanoid market at $2 billion to $3 billion and projected it could grow to roughly $40 billion by 2035, with an upside scenario of about $200 billion.

Why it matters for investors

Here is the thread tying it together: Amazon is still investing in personal robots even after Astro's short commercial arc. It has repositioned teams, bought a humanoid startup, stood up a Personal Robotics Group, and is hiring to bring a new device to market, while publicly acknowledging the hard gap between lab demos and your living room. The bottom line: if the tooling keeps improving and costs fall, this is a long runway - and Amazon is positioning to be early again.

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