Your Personal Open-Source Humanoid Robot for $8,999 — JX Mo, K-Scale Labs
Jul 2, 2025 · 19:26
Jingxiang Mo, founding engineer at K-Scale Labs, introduces their open-source humanoid robots: the 5-foot K-Bot (pre-order for $8,999, delivered by October) and the 1.5-foot Z-Bot, both fully open-source from hardware to ML models. The K-Bot uses MIT CHiTA actuators, provides up to 250 TOPS compute, runs an RL-based whole-body controller trained with MJX in 1-2 hours, and offers a Python/Rust SDK (pip install kos) with a digital twin simulator for rapid development. Mo emphasizes modularity—swappable end-effectors and upgradable heads—and positions K-Scale as the first US consumer humanoid robotics company, targeting developers and households. The robots are significantly cheaper than competitors (Tesla Optimus at ~60K, Unitree at 40K) and include VR teleoperation, OTA software updates, and a bimonthly hackathon community.
