At the 2025 Humanoids Summit in Mountain View, two robots quietly folded shirts behind a demo table. Orange-tipped claws pinched cotton. Fold. Stack. Repeat. A small crowd gathered. This was Isaac, the personal robot built by Weave Robotics to tackle real chores—beginning with laundry.
The company’s first deployment is already active in San Francisco laundromats through a partnership with Tumble, an on-demand laundry service. “Customers can have their clothes picked up from their front door, taken to a laundromat folded by our robot, and then returned in four hours or less,” said co-founder Evan Wineland.
Unlike many robotics demos, these were working units. “We actually built these very robots just this week,” Wineland said. “And they happen to be the best performing ones that we’ve made in our entire fleet.”
The robot doing the folding is Isaac, a tabletop-height, dual-arm system designed specifically for household tasks. Its starting point—laundry—is both universal and difficult. Folding requires manipulating soft, irregular materials, something many robotic systems still struggle with. Isaac’s simple, seated form makes it efficient, safe, and suited to real homes.
Weave Robotics was founded in 2024 by Evan Wineland and Kaan Doğrusöz, former Apple engineers who met at Carnegie Mellon University in 2015. Wineland previously led product on Siri and Apple Intelligence. Doğrusöz worked across ML robotics and firmware, shipping features like Apple Watch’s Double Tap. Their goal with Weave is simple: build the first personal robot that works in the home—and ship it.
They’re starting with laundry, but not stopping there. “The robot should be useful in our own homes today,” Doğrusöz has said. “We didn’t want to wait five or ten years.” Isaac is designed to expand into other household tasks like clearing tables, tidying floors, and assisting with light maintenance.
Unlike humanoid robots focused on locomotion or entertainment, Isaac is built around a task-first philosophy. It doesn’t walk or dance. It reaches. It folds. It adapts.
Technically, Isaac operates on a hybrid autonomy model. When it encounters unfamiliar scenarios—like a knotted hoodie or an unfolded bedsheet—a human operator can assist remotely. That data then becomes training material to improve the robot’s performance over time. The goal is to grow its autonomy while still delivering real, reliable service.
The company trains its own vision-language-action models, allowing Isaac to recognize garments, plan folds, and recover from errors. These models are trained on data collected during real-world deployments, not just in controlled labs.
Isaac also prioritizes home safety and comfort. The robot’s cameras retract when idle. It lowers into a stowed posture when not in use. Its interface supports both voice and text input, and users can trigger tasks through an app.
The average American spends 3.5 years of their life on housework. Weave wants to give that time back. Isaac isn’t a research project. It’s a product. And it’s scheduled to ship to the first 30 customers in 2026.
Weave graduated from Y Combinator’s Summer 2024 batch and has been accepting preorders since demo day. Its initial launch targets laundry rooms and apartments, with plans to scale into broader domestic environments. Future applications include hospitality and light commercial support.
TLDR:
Company: Weave Robotics (YC S24)
Product: Isaac, a general-purpose home robot that folds laundry and tidies
Founders: Evan Wineland and Kaan Doğrusöz (ex-Apple, CMU alums)
Deployment: Active in SF laundromats; home units coming 2026
Tech: Vision-language-action models with hybrid autonomy
Further Reading:
#homerobotics
