Genesis AI unveils Eno robot with wheels, challenging the $39 billion humanoid robot industry

Genesis AI bets wheels beat legs in the robot race

Genesis AI unveiled Eno, a wheeled robot with dexterous hands and a foundation model called GENE, positioning it as a cheaper, more practical alternative to humanoids. The French-American startup has raised $105 million in seed funding and plans customer deployments by the end of 2026. On Tuesday, while the robotics industry continued pouring billions into machines that walk like humans, a startup called Genesis AI unveiled one that deliberately does not. Eno is a wheeled robot with a foldable tower, dexterous hands, and a foundation model its creators say gives it human-level manipulation. It is a pointed rejection of the industry's prevailing assumption: that useful robots must look and move like people. The humanoid consensus The bet against Genesis is enormous. Figure AI holds a $39 billion private valuation and has begun deploying its Figure 03 humanoid in a Catalyst Brands warehouse, handling logistics for the parent company of JCPenney and Brooks Brothers. Hyundai and Boston Dynamics plan to produce 30,000 Atlas humanoids a year by 2028 for deployment at car factories in Georgia. Norway's 1X Technologies sold out its first production run of 10,000 home robots within five days of opening preorders. The boom extends to China, where more than 150 companies are chasing a market that delivered roughly 14,000 units in 2025. Yet only 23% of buyers reported satisfaction, a gap between supply-side ambition and demand-side reality that Genesis believes vindicates its approach. Wheels, not legs "The hardest problem in robotics is not locomotion," Zhou Xian, Genesis AI's co-founder and CEO, told Business Insider. It is manipulation, the ability to handle objects with the dexterity and adaptability of a human hand. The race to solve that problem has attracted vast investment on its own. Chinese robot-hand maker Linkerbot is targeting a $6 billion valuation on the strength of its dexterous grippers alone, shipping more than 1,000 units a month. Zhou, who holds a PhD from Carnegie Mellon, founded Genesis with Théophile Gervet, a former Mistral researcher. The company has offices in Paris and San Francisco and employs roughly 60 people. Eno's wheeled base is the direct consequence of that diagnosis. Wheels are cheaper to build, simpler to stabilise, and safer to deploy around humans than bipedal legs, which remain an unsolved engineering challenge at commercial scale. The trade-off is that Eno cannot climb stairs. Genesis argues that for the use cases it is targeting, logistics, manufacturing, hospitals, and hotels, that limitation rarely matters. The $300 glove Most robotics companies teach their machines through teleoperation, in which a human operator remotely controls the robot while its sensors record every movement. That process reportedly costs up to $6,000 per hour. Genesis developed a sensor glove instead, one that maps directly between a human hand, the glove, and the robot's hand. The company says the gloves cost roughly $300 a pair, approximately 100 times less than conventional teleoperation setups, and collect up to five times more usable training data per session. That data feeds GENE-26.5, the foundation model Genesis demonstrated in May. In a public demo, a single model running on the same hardware performed cooking tasks, solved a Rubik's cube, played piano, and assembled wire harnesses. Not alone on wheels Genesis is not the only company questioning the humanoid orthodoxy. Sunday Robotics raised a $165 million Series B at a $1.15 billion valuation for Memo, a wheeled domestic robot trained on data from sensor gloves worn in more than 500 real homes. German startup Sereact has taken a different tack, building a "robot brain" that plugs into existing industrial hardware. Its Cortex model powers more than 200 deployed systems for BMW, Daimler Truck, and PepsiCo, sidestepping the form-factor debate entirely. Meanwhile, Agility Robotics' bipedal Digit has quietly become the only humanoid generating revenue from paying commercial customers, having moved more than 100,000 totes in a GXO Logistics warehouse. The gap between that single milestone and the industry's multi-billion-dollar valuations tells its own story. The logistics sector Genesis is targeting is not short of incumbents either. Amazon has invested more than €10 billion in its European fulfilment network and recently deployed Proteus, a warehouse robot that takes plain-language instructions. The funding and the bet Genesis raised $105 million in seed funding co-led by Eclipse Ventures and Khosla Ventures, with participation from Eric Schmidt, Xavier Niel, MIT robotics professor Daniela Rus, and former Intel Labs head Vladlen Koltun. "Even in the most automated industries, the robot-to-human ratio rarely exceeds 1:30," Eclipse partner Charly Mwangi said. The company plans to begin production and customer deployments by the end of 2026, starting with logistics and manufacturing before expanding to hospitality and healthcare. Whether the humanoid industry's IPO-bound giants or Genesis's wheeled contrarianism proves correct depends on a question the market has not yet answered: what shape does a useful robot actually need to be? For now, Genesis is betting the answer has wheels.

Eno humanoid robot debuts as general-purpose worker for industries

Genesis AI has unveiled Eno, its first general-purpose robot, as the company pushes toward building machines that can work across factories, laboratories, hospitals, hotels and eventually homes. The robot combines Genesis AI's custom hardware with GENE, the company's robotics foundation model, which serves as Eno's control system. According to the company, the robot is designed to perform complex tasks, adapt to changing environments and complete objectives with minimal human intervention. Genesis AI said Eno differs from traditional industrial robots because it is built to operate as a physical agent rather than execute a fixed set of commands. The company claims the system can understand goals, reason through changing conditions, retain memory and carry out multi-step tasks over extended periods. The announcement comes as companies across the robotics sector race to develop humanoid and general-purpose robots capable of handling a wider range of real-world jobs with less specialized programming. Instead of closely resembling a human, Eno uses a wheeled base topped by an adjustable tower structure. The robot can change its height and reach in real time and fold into a more compact form when not in use. Its most human-like features are its robotic hands. Genesis AI says the hands match the form and function of human hands, allowing Eno to use existing tools and interact with environments already designed for people. "The only path to creating a robot that can truly deliver value to society and excel in the real world is through intentional design and a single, comprehensive system," said Zhou Xian, co-founder and CEO of Genesis AI. "From day one we've approached our design and engineering through a production mindset built around bringing our hardware, software and intelligence together as a whole." The company said Eno was designed alongside GENE so that the robot's body and intelligence system function as a single platform. GENE is intended to give the robot human-level dexterity and the ability to handle long-horizon tasks that require planning and adaptation. One of Eno's distinguishing features is an optional built-in screen that displays the robot's reasoning process, operational status and intended actions in real time. Genesis AI said the feature is designed to improve transparency and help people understand what the robot is doing as it works alongside human operators. "What Genesis is building with Eno is a fundamentally new model for extending human capability through advanced robotics," said Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO and Genesis AI investor. "The breakthrough is not replacing human expertise, but amplifying it -- making advanced robotics genuinely useful, accessible, and scalable across industries." According to the company, Eno could eventually manage entire workflows rather than perform isolated actions. Examples include keeping production lines supplied, coordinating tasks across facilities and preparing workspaces for the next shift. Genesis AI plans to begin production and targeted customer deployments before the end of 2026. Initial deployments will focus on manufacturing, logistics and laboratory environments, followed by hospitality and healthcare settings. Consumer-focused applications are expected at a later stage. The company recently raised $105 million in seed funding and says additional robotic platforms are already under development as part of its broader roadmap for general-purpose robotics.

French startup unveils non-humanoid robot as AI race moves to physical machines

French robotics startup Genesis AI on Tuesday unveiled Eno, its first general-purpose robot, marking a step toward bringing advanced AI into physical machines. Backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the company says the wheeled robot is designed to extend human capabilities rather than mimic human form, with commercial deployments planned from late 2026. Genesis AI, the French robotics startup backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, unveiled its first general-purpose robot on Tuesday, as AI capabilities expand beyond chatbots and into physical machines. The robot, named Eno, breaks from the humanoid design usually favoured by leading manufacturers, featuring a wheeled base rather than legs, a foldable tower and hands ⁠that the company says match the form of a human hand. Driven by advances in AI, the global robotics market is expanding rapidly, sparking debate over its impact on employment, though ⁠technical challenges, mostly about processing power and battery life, remain. Read moreAnthropic disables access to top-tier AI models after US ban on foreign use A Reuters/Ipsos poll this month showed 53 percent of Americans were concerned that AI would put them or someone in their household out of work. Founded in early 2025, Genesis AI has raised $105 million (€90.6 million), one of France's largest and matching the record seed round of Mistral AI - Europe's leading AI company. Genesis AI's valuation was not immediately available. Eno runs on Genesis's own AI model and is not built to look like humans, but to extend human capabilities, according to the company. Genesis AI plans to begin production and targeted customer deployments by the end of 2026, starting with logistics and manufacturing customers, followed by hotels, hospitals and consumers. In a statement, Schmidt said the robot's breakthrough will not replace human expertise, but rather "amplify it" to unlock what he called "one of the largest economic opportunities of the AI era". Read more'Human role narrowing': Anthropic calls for global AI slowdown as systems could escape control Genesis AI has built dozens of units so far and plans to scale up production in the second half of 2026, Vivian Sun, Vice President of Commercial and Strategy at Genesis AI, told Reuters. Sun said the wheeled base was chosen because most industrial customers operate on flat floors, adding that legs ⁠would only make sense for use cases like climbing stairs. "We are mimicking humans in capabilities, not ⁠in form. Humans can go up and down, and so does the robot, but through this foldable design."

French startup bets on non-humanoid design in crowded AI robot race

PARIS, June 16 (Reuters) - Genesis AI, the French robotics startup backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, unveiled its first general-purpose robot on Tuesday, as AI capabilities expand beyond chatbots and into physical machines. The robot, named Eno, breaks from the humanoid design usually favoured by leading manufacturers, featuring a wheeled base rather than legs, a foldable tower and hands that the company says match the form of a human hand. Driven by advances in AI, the global robotics market is expanding rapidly, sparking debate over its impact on employment, though technical challenges, mostly about processing power and battery life, remain. A Reuters/Ipsos poll this month showed 53% of Americans were concerned that AI would put them or someone in their household out of work. Founded in early 2025, Genesis AI has raised $105 million (EUR90.6 million), one of France's largest and matching the record seed round of Mistral AI - Europe's leading AI company. Genesis AI's valuation was not immediately available. Eno runs on Genesis' own AI model, and is not built to look like humans, but to extend human capabilities, according to the company. Genesis AI plans to begin production and targeted customer deployments by the end of 2026, starting with logistics and manufacturing customers, followed by hotels, hospitals, and consumers. In a statement, Schmidt said the robot's breakthrough will not replace human expertise, but rather "amplify it" to unlock what he called "one of the largest economic opportunities of the AI era." Genesis AI has built dozens of units so far and plans to scale up production in the second half of 2026, Vivian Sun, Vice President of Commercial and Strategy at Genesis AI, told Reuters. Sun said the wheeled base was chosen because most industrial customers operate on flat floors, adding that legs would only make sense for use cases like climbing stairs. "We are mimicking humans in capabilities, not in form. Humans can go up and down, and so does the robot, but through this foldable design." (1 euro = $1.1584) (Reporting by Leo Marchandon and Gianluca Lo Nostro; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman) By Leo Marchandon and Gianluca Lo Nostro