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New Bot on the Block - K-bot
We profile one of the coolest new robotics companies around plus slimebot and robot soccer
Ferol Vernon
July 18, 2025
Hey Robot fans,
We’re back at it here at WeRobot after a break for a few weeks exploring the wild west of America. We ran into otherworldly trees, breathtaking mountains, but precious few bots. There’s a lot fun news in robot-world so let’s plug in!
Meet K-Bot, finally a robot you can buy
There’s a bunch of young engineers building robots in a garage in Palo Alto. This will be shocking to absolutely no one. What is different? This crew is fiercely opinionated about how to build a personal robot: it should be affordable, open source, and built in public.
Team, we love everything about this.
Introducing K-Bot — a humanoid that can toast bread, flip burgers, and costs less than a used Subaru. It's real, and preorders are available right now. Check out the launch video below.
Aside: Categorizing the Path to Robotopia
The companies pursing at home robotics generally fall into 1 of 3 categories:
🦾 Megabots - Awesome. Gorgeous. Utterly unobtainable. Think Tesla Optimus, 1X Neo, Figure, Agility’s Digit. These giants have billion-dollar backing and cinematic YouTube reels — but no buy button. I’ve emailed. I’ve tweeted. I’ve begged. The response? Crickets.
Availability: 0.0% of humans.
🔩 DIY & Lab Projects - Hugging Face’s robot, Pollen Robotics, SlimeBot, SquirrelBot — delightful science fair vibes. These teams give you open-source plans, software, and a big ol’ shopping list. You build it yourself, program it yourself, and cross your fingers. Great if you’re a roboticist. Not so much if you’re just robot-curious.
Availability: 1% of humans.🚚 Gettable Robots (Our Favorite) - This is where we focus at WeRobot. Bots you can actually buy. Like Unitree’s humanoids — janky ordering flow, mysterious pricing, but they show up at your door eventually. This week’s star, K-Scale, is the next evolution: a clear price, a working buy button, and a mission to bring bots to the masses.
🤔 Our Take
K-scale is tapping into something real. At $14,000 (with a $500 pre-order), the K-Bot isn’t cheap — but it’s on a totally different planet than the six-figure mega-bots we usually see locked behind slick YouTube videos. This bot makes toast, flips burgers, and stirs pancake batter. It's not here to dance — it's here to help.
More importantly, K-scale has a clear mission: build in the open, ship to real people, and bring robots into homes fast. We love that. They launched K-Bot on July 1, and by July 3 they’d crossed $1 million in pre-orders. That’s 1,000 preorders per day! 🤯
For the longtime bot-watchers here, it’s not surprising. We know the world is ready for robotopia, but the demand for K-Bot is validation that the humanoid era is no longer theoretical. It’s knocking on your door. And it might be carrying toast.
*Thanks to reader Trevor N. for the tip on K-scale.
🎥 Video Corner
This section is where we round up the best robot vids from around the web.
SlimeBot: Ooey, Gooey, and Weirdly Wonderful
This magnetic slime robot is part Nickelodeon, part sci-fi medical miracle. It slithers under magnetic control and looks like something you’d find in a Ghostbusters reboot, but its potential in healthcare is no joke. The SlimeBot could one day dive into your stomach to retrieve swallowed objects. As a parent who’s made an ER trip thanks to a quarter in the digestive tract, I say: slime me up.
That’s $0.25 USD in my boy’s belly!
Toddlers, Beware: Robot Soccer Is Coming for Your Orange Slices
Robots just played a game of soccer that rivals your local toddler league, minus the juice boxes and temper tantrums. China hosted its first fully autonomous soccer match, and while the footwork’s still a bit wobbly, it's a fun watch. No tantrums, no halftime snacks, just a glimpse into our inevitable robo-sport future. Somewhere, a soccer parent just sighed in relief… or despair.
*Thanks to reader Todd M. for the tip.
Heads Up, Neo!
A recent video from 1X Robotics shows a sleek Nordic lobby where their humanoid, Neo, acts as a robotic receptionist. It’s all minimalism and ambient lighting—until Neo casually hands a disembodied robot head to a woman before greeting the next guest. Wait, what? For a promo video this high-budget, maybe hand her a clipboard or a coffee next time. The vibes went full Black Mirror when they could’ve just gone Blade Runner-lite.
Until next time.
The future is bright,
Ferol
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