K-Scale Labs championed open-source humanoid robots built for developers, researchers, and the maker community.
K-Scale Labs was an American open-source humanoid robotics startup founded in 2024 through Y Combinator’s W24 batch. The company aimed to make humanoid robots affordable, transparent, and developer-friendly by combining open-source hardware, software, and AI into platforms that could be built, modified, and improved by the wider robotics community. Despite operating for less than two years, K-Scale Labs rapidly developed and released multiple open-source humanoid prototypes, including K-Bot, demonstrating an unusually fast hardware development cycle. Although the company ceased operations in late 2025, it became an early advocate for open humanoid robotics and contributed to the growing movement toward accessible, community-driven embodied AI development.
In November 2025, K-Scale canceled K-Bot orders, refunded deposits, and wound down operations after failing to secure the financing needed for mass production. The company also moved to open-source its remaining intellectual property, turning the shutdown into a final contribution to the developer robotics community.
K-Scale Labs emerged in 2024 with the goal of building open-source general-purpose humanoid robots for developers. Y Combinator described the company as pursuing open-source humanoid robots, while K-Scale itself framed the mission as making robots accessible, auditable, and beneficial to humanity.
By February 2025, K-Scale was presenting K-Bot as its latest humanoid while claiming six robot generations completed in less than a year. The company used K-Bot to embody its argument that low-cost open-source humanoids should be available to developers rather than only large industrial buyers.
In November 2025, K-Scale canceled K-Bot orders, refunded deposits, and wound down operations after failing to secure the financing needed for mass production. The company also moved to open-source its remaining intellectual property, turning the shutdown into a final contribution to the developer robotics community.