The archive · Hardware & Devices · Strategic decision · 2024–2025
K-Scale Labs' open-source humanoid bet: $6.25M raised, refunds, shutdown Nov 2025
YC W24 open-source humanoid startup raised $6.25M, took 100+ pre-orders worth $2M+, then shut down in Nov 2025, refunding deposits and open-sourcing its IP.
K-Scale Labs
What the business is
K-Scale Labs built the K-Bot, a 1.4m open-source bipedal humanoid robot with a base price of $8,999, plus an open-source software stack for training and deploying robot AI, aimed at developers and researchers.
Starting capital：$6.25M total: ~$4M seed at a $50M valuation led by Fellows Fund, $250K from Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross (Apr 2025), and a $2M strategic investment from Zhejiang Taotao Vehicle Industry (Jun 2025); 36Kr also reports 2024 revenue of $2.9M
How it started
Benjamin Bolte, an ex-Meta AI researcher and ex-Tesla senior Autopilot engineer, started the project in a Palo Alto garage in 2024 because no cheap, hackable humanoid existed; K-Scale went through YC W24 and had a standing, waving robot by Demo Day.
What happened
In May 2025 K-Scale open-sourced its software suite and opened K-Bot pre-orders at $8,999 with a 'Full Autonomy' upsell. June 2025 brought a $2M strategic round from Zhejiang Taotao Vehicle Industry for supply-chain support. About 10 engineers built roughly 10 prototypes costing over $100,000 each. More than 100 pre-orders worth $2M+ came in, but the Q3 2025 attempt to raise $10–15M failed; on one admired VC's advice the team had killed the cheaper Z-Bot and bet everything on the high-end K-Bot.
How it ended up
On Nov 4–5, 2025 Bolte emailed customers and investors that K-Scale was shutting down: the team was laid off, deposits were refunded in full, and all proprietary hardware and software was released open-source (CERN-OHL-S-2.0 / MIT) with under $400K and less than a month of runway left; acquisition talks with 1X and The Bot Co. went nowhere.
Background
K-Scale Labs was founded in 2024 by Benjamin Bolte, an ex-Meta AI researcher and former Tesla senior Autopilot engineer, to build the cheap, hackable humanoid he couldn't find: an open-source, 1.4m bipedal robot sold at $8,999 when comparable US research humanoids cost over $50,000. The company went through YC's W24 batch and had a standing, waving robot by Demo Day.
K-Scale raised about $6.25M in total — a ~$4M seed at a $50M valuation led by Fellows Fund, $250K from Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, and a $2M strategic investment from Zhejiang Taotao Vehicle Industry — and opened K-Bot pre-orders in summer 2025. From May to early November it took more than 100 pre-orders worth over $2M, including one from OpenAI's robotics head Caitlin Kalinowski. Traction was real: its Launch HN drew 233 points and 95 comments in July 2025.
The economics never closed. A team of about 10 engineers built only about 10 prototypes, each costing over $100,000, and moving from 3D printing to die-casting and cold forging required tooling investment no one would fund. The Q3 2025 attempt to raise $10–15M failed, and acquisition talks with 1X and The Bot Co. produced only offers to hire a few team members. By early November 2025 the company had under $400,000 and less than a month of runway.
On Nov 4–5, 2025 Bolte emailed customers that K-Scale was shutting down: deposits refunded in full, the team laid off, and all proprietary hardware and software released open-source (CERN-OHL-S-2.0 hardware, MIT software). In his postmortem he blamed failed financing and a US supply-chain gap, arguing Chinese competitors such as Unitree, EngineAI, Booster and Noetix had funded large-scale production while Western firms shipped almost nothing.
What has to be true
- Killing the cheaper Z-Bot to bet everything on the $8,999 K-Bot, on one admired VC's advice, left a single capital-hungry product line (36Kr).
- Mass-production economics never closed: about 10 prototypes at over $100K each, with die-casting and cold-forging tooling costs no one would fund (36Kr).
- The $10–15M Series A failed in Q3 2025 and acquirers only wanted to hire team members, leaving cash at ~$400K (36Kr).
- Bolte's farewell email blamed the US's missing small-batch manufacturing ecosystem versus Unitree, EngineAI, Booster and Noetix, who had raised mass-production capital (via Mike Kalil).
What can be applied
Pre-order demand can't substitute for tooling capital: K-Scale took $2M+ in K-Bot pre-orders, but no Series A came for its $100K+ prototypes — production never began.
Aftermath
As of 2026-09-02 K-Scale Labs is defunct: deposits were refunded, staff laid off, and its IP released under CERN-OHL-S-2.0 and MIT licenses, with the kscalelabs GitHub organization (130+ repos) still public. Co-founder Jingxiang Mo left in Sept 2025 and founded Gradient Robotics, which inherited part of the team. The shutdown became a widely cited example of US humanoid startups losing the manufacturing race to China's supply chain.
Sources
- Palo Alto Humanoid Startup K-Scale Labs Shuts Down
- The First Humanoid Robot Company Collapses During Mass Production
- Robotics Company Benchmarking Against Unitree on the Verge of Bankruptcy
- Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots
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