Sunday Robotics has raised $165 million at a $1.15 billion valuation in a Series B round led by Coatue Management. Other investors in the round include Tiger Global, Benchmark, and Bain Capital Ventures. The funding marks another significant bet that home robotics, long a promise of science fiction, is finally becoming viable. But it also reveals how fragmented the market remains. Unlike competitors pursuing humanoid form factors, Sunday is betting on a wheeled robot that learns differently from the rest.
Sunday, founded by Tony Zhao and Cheng Chi, is building a household robot called Memo that helps with tasks like laundry and clearing the table. The company emerged from stealth late last year and already has 1,000 people on its waitlist. The early demand signals investor confidence, but execution remains the real hurdle. The robotics industry has repeatedly overpromised on domestic automation; Sunday's pitch hinges on a different approach to training.
A data-first strategy
Sunday's "Skill Capture Glove" has been shipped to thousands of "Memory Developers" who record real household routines in their own homes. That data from around 10 million chore "episodes" from more than 500 homes trains Sunday's ACT-1 foundation model to handle long, messy tasks like table-to-dishwasher cycles and sock folding. This contrasts sharply with competitors who rely on teleoperation (remotely controlling a robot to teach it) or synthetic data. Sunday argues both approaches create bottlenecks: teleoperation is slow and capital-intensive; synthetic simulations fail to capture real-world mess.
Memo is a 1.7-metre-tall, 77-kilogram torso-style robot on a wheeled base, with two multi-DoF arms and simple but capable dual grippers. Its central column can raise and lower the upper body so the arms reach from floor level up to around 2.1 metres, giving enough range to pick items off the floor, work at countertop height and access overhead shelves. The wheeled base sacrifices the bipedal appeal of competitors' designs (think Tesla's Optimus or Figure AI) for stability and practical reach. The design reveals Sunday's philosophy: build for the messy reality of kitchens and laundry rooms, not for the glossy tech demos that investors love.
Realistic timelines, crowded market
Memo is currently pre-commercial; Sunday is taking applications for a 2026 "Founding Family" beta in which about 50 households will receive individually numbered units while the team iterates on reliability, safety and service. This is refreshingly candid. After years of vapourware from robot makers, Sunday's willingness to say "not ready yet" carries weight. The beta approach also acknowledges a practical reality: home robots will need to learn from real homes, not just factories.
Yet Sunday enters a market increasingly crowded with well-funded competitors. Figure AI enters 2026 as arguably the most well-capitalised pure-play humanoid robotics company, with over $1.9 billion in total funding and a $39 billion valuation. Tesla is targeting mass production of Optimus. Chinese manufacturers like Unitree are shipping affordable models at unprecedented speed. The global humanoid robot market is projected to grow from USD 2.92 billion in 2025 to USD 15.26 billion by 2030, registering a CAGR of 39.2%. Growth is being propelled by rising adoption of humanoid robots in personal assistance, caregiving, and healthcare applications, alongside increasing deployment in manufacturing, retail, and logistics for workforce augmentation.
Sunday's path to profitability hinges on whether its data-first training method can deliver what the hype cannot: a robot that actually works reliably in real homes. The 1,000-person waitlist suggests consumer appetite is there. Whether Sunday can convert that into sustainable sales, at what price point, and against an increasingly fierce field of competitors will define whether this $1.15 billion valuation represents genuine progress or merely another chapter in a very long robotics hype cycle.