K-Scale tried to make humanoids look more like the personal-computer market than the defense-contractor market. Its story is notable because it moved unusually fast, open-sourced aggressively, and then became an early example of how difficult low-cost humanoid commercialization remained.
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 was a U.S. open-source humanoid robotics startup from YC W24 that aimed to make personal robots cheap, auditable, and developer-friendly. The company shipped multiple open-source prototypes in under a year and promoted K-Bot as a low-cost humanoid platform before shutting down in late 2025.
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.
