This is the new AI hype in Silicon Valley. Should you get on board?
June 8, 2026 at 6:15 a.m. EDTToday at 6:15 a.m. EDT
Pull a shirt out of the laundry pile, smooth it, fold in the sleeves, halve it, then halve it again, gently form it into a square and stack it in the drawer. How many times do you repeat this process every week? If you could assign a robot costing a few thousand dollars to handle the routine, would you?
In the backyard of a Palo Alto home in the heart of Silicon Valley, I saw a glimpse of what the future might look like.
PlayLume lamps from Syncere at a demo in Palo Alto, California, on May 14. (Video played at twice its original speed.)
Syncere, a tech start-up, organized this event to show off its lamp-shaped robot. A crowd of engineers, founders and investors attended.
Physical artificial intelligence, the field that builds AI systems to carry out tasks in the real world, is drawing a surge of investor interest. And the enthusiasm has landed squarely on the age-old household task of folding laundry. Almost every top humanoid robotics company has launched a robot that can fold laundry. G1, the 4-foot-3-inch robot made by the Chinese company Unitree, can fold clothes and handle other chores. Figure AI, the U.S. company whose robot walked the red carpet with first lady Melania Trump, is also training its model to fold clothes. Weave Robotics, a start-up in San Francisco, is shipping Isaac 0, a robot designed specifically to fold laundry, for $8,000 or a monthly subscription of $450.
Folding laundry seems like a perfect task that connects cutting-edge robotics to the mass market. Consumers see its appeal, though there are challenges robots need to overcome.
You will need a pair of Syncere’s Lume lamps to properly fold clothes. At $3,500 for two, they cost less than their competitors. An investor at the event told me she was more interested in buying one for her home than purchasing a stake in the company. A few others I spoke with expressed similar interest. Syncere’s co-founder, Aaron Tan, isn’t worried about the price. Premium designer lamps, he pointed out, can sell for more than $2,000.
The average American spends about five hours a month doing laundry, according to 2024 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Let’s assume half of that time is spent folding laundry. That means by purchasing Lume or Isaac for about two years of use, you would effectively be paying from $60 to $180 an hour to fold clothes. I could pay my neighborhood laundromat about $30 an hour for the same work.
How much would you pay for the service of folding your clothes?
$0. I fold my own clothes.
Even if you could afford the Lume, there’s a problem. With a curated pile of T-shirts of similar sizes, weights and materials, the evening’s demo went smoothly. But when the robot tried to fold clothes volunteered by guests, including a shirt, a lightweight down vest and a sweater, it failed.
PlayLume lamps from Syncere at a demo in Palo Alto, California, on May 14. (Video played at twice its original speed.)
Folding clothes is technically challenging for good reason: There’s not enough training data for robots to learn the home environment, imitate human hands or process intricate feedback when dealing with different clothing materials. As my colleague Kevin Schaul reported, even a leading AI robotics researcher is unsure when a laundry-folding robot will become a viable product.
But these AI robots are selling. Tan said his company had received more than 1,000 orders. You only buy the lamp once, he said. Customers who purchase from the early batches will receive lifetime software upgrades, improving the lamp’s functionality as it collects user data and refines its model.
As the demo went on, it became clear that Syncere and other AI robotics companies aren’t selling a robot that folds your laundry. They’re selling a promise of folding your clothes — to be delivered in the future. It’s a similar promise that every AI company has been promoting: an assurance of improved productivity and societal transformation, just not yet.
PlayLume lamps from Syncere at a demo in Palo Alto, California, on May 14. (Video played at twice its original speed.) Would you buy a laundry-folding robot even if it doesn’t fold your clothes well?
What a cool idea. Take my money!
During a recent taxi ride, my Lyft driver said she was living in San Francisco last year, but the rising rent pushed her out. She moved to the more affordable East Bay and lives with a roommate. She complained about the growing presence of Waymo cars in the city.
“Robots are supposed to do things humans can’t do, right?” she asked me. “So why are they replacing us?”
Household robots are waiting for their Waymo moment. It’s not hard to imagine a future in which a functioning laundry-folding lamp would cost what a lamp costs, plus a small subscription fee. I would happily pay and hand my fitted sheets and uneven-size socks to my bedside assistant.