Meet Feather, the startup building the ‘Android of robotics’ for developers

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.

“You can’t buy a Tesla robot today and develop on top of it,” Feather co-founder Hoa Mai told TechCrunch. “We realized that this is not how most companies became successful. Hardware players like Nvidia or Apple started with a product that worked and was deployable, and then they added complexity over time.”