Meta built a humanoid robot called Max in three months, and won’t sell it

Meta has built a humanoid robot meant for household chores, and it took the company and a Chinese robot maker about three months to do it. The machine, known inside Meta as Max, has a screen for a face that shows expressions, speakers in its chest and five-fingered hands designed to pick up small objects such as bottles and toys, according to a report by The Information. Meta told the publication that the work is internal research and that it has no plans to sell the robots.

That last line matters for anyone hoping a Meta robot will fold their laundry soon. Max has no price and no ship date. It is Meta’s test of whether the AI it already puts in phones, smart glasses and apps can have a body. The company’s chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, has described the humanoid internally as a physical form for Muse, Meta’s AI agent, the report said.

The numbers describe a compact machine. Max stands about 1.5 metres tall, roughly the height of a 12-year-old, and weighs about 48 kilograms (106 pounds). That makes it shorter and much lighter than its partner’s own GR-3, a care robot that Fourier lists at 165 centimetres and 71 kilograms. Its brain is Nvidia‘s Jetson Thor, the robotics computer Nvidia also sells to developers as a $3,499 kit.

Meta’s design targets show what kind of housemate it has in mind. According to the requirements described in the report, the company wants the robot to hear spoken commands from about five metres away, roughly across a living room, and to recognise a wave from about three metres. It should keep eye contact while it talks and make clear whether it is listening, thinking, speaking or unsure what to do.

Max is not a rebadged Fourier product. The report describes a custom platform that draws on three generations of Fourier robots, with changes to the body proportions, the head, the display and the camera layout. Meta’s vice president of product for robotics spent almost two months at Fourier’s factory in Shanghai working on the build. Fourier started out making exoskeletons and rehabilitation robots before it moved into humanoids.

There is a lot nobody outside Meta has seen. Everything known about Max comes from people familiar with the project, and the abilities listed above are requirements on a spec sheet, not tasks the robot has been shown doing in public. Recognising a wave is a long way from loading a dishwasher safely with a child in the kitchen, and no home humanoid has yet shown it can do that kind of open-ended housework reliably. Max is not on sale anywhere, and Meta has not named a single country where a home robot of its own might launch.

Meanwhile, others are already selling. 1X has taken $20,000 preorders for its NEO home humanoid, and Tesla has started building Optimus robots at its Fremont factory. Meta’s own robotics push is younger: it set up a hardware team early last year, and in May it bought Assured Robot Intelligence, a San Diego start-up that writes AI software for robots, whose staff joined Meta Superintelligence Labs.

The Information published its report on Saturday, citing people familiar with the project. Meta showed Max to some employees at an internal robotics event in late August, and work on Max 2 began in September. The second prototype is due to get a redesigned torso, better hands, a projector and extra sensors to help it climb stairs. One of the report’s sources said there is no launch date for a Meta humanoid product.

Meta has also been recruiting robotics engineers in Shanghai and Shenzhen, according to the report, including roles that prepare for possible large-scale manufacturing. For a company with no plans to sell robots, Meta is already hiring with mass production in mind.

Tags: nvidia, meta, humanoid robots, Meta Superintelligence Labs, Fourier, home robots

Meta built a humanoid robot called Max in three months, and won’t sell it

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