Amazon assembles team for new home robot after Astro

Amazon Amazon.com, Inc. ↗ 1.48% is making another attempt at a household robot. Over the past several months it has put together a new team working on a "new-to-world robot product," CNBC reported on November 8, based on its review of the company's job posts. The project comes after the $1,450 Astro, which never got past invite-only sales and shipped to just a few thousand customers.cnbc.com

What the job posts show

"Robots are about to step out of the movies and into our homes," said one engineering listing that has since been removed. According to CNBC, it described a product that can navigate "dynamic home environments" and operate autonomously "alongside family members." Other listings are for a user experience designer who will "define what it feels like to live with a Fauna robot" and a field support engineer who will handle customer support and on-site repairs. A Unite.AI review of the posts found a senior software role building cloud services and telemetry pipelines for "a growing robot fleet." Amazon has not shared a design, a price or a launch date.unite.ai+1

Most of the Astro team was moved onto the project earlier this year, and Amazon also hired an MIT roboticist, according to LinkedIn profiles cited by CNBC. In March, Amazon bought New York-based Fauna Robotics, the maker of a 3.5-foot humanoid called Sprout, and placed it in a new Personal Robotics Group. Some of that group's staff came from Lab126, the unit behind the Kindle and Echo. Fauna said on March 24 that it would keep selling Sprout Creator Edition robots as "Fauna Robotics, an Amazon company."cnbc.com+1

Amazon's case for a second try

Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser told CNBC that the company bought Fauna because it is "committed to tackling the challenges that can unlock the personal robotics category." He also said there is still a large gap between what works in a lab and what works in a living room. Glasser said Amazon continues to support Astro owners. Some of those owners have grown frustrated that Alexa+ doesn't work on the device.cnbc.com

Colin Angle, co-founder of iRobot, said the tools for building robots have improved a great deal. "The toolkit that the Astro team had when they did it was clubs with nails in them," he told CNBC. Venture firms put $33.4 billion into robotics and physical AI companies in the first half of 2026, PitchBook data show, compared with $28.7 billion for all of 2025.cnbc.com

A harder room to master

Homes are still difficult places for robots to work. "Children, pets, grandparents, stairways. Nobody's home is set up exactly the same," said Jeff Burnstein, president of the Association for Advancing Automation, in the CNBC report. North Carolina owner Emily Lugo Velez said her Astro has turned into a party trick and a "trip hazard." She expects to keep it "until it eventually dies, then send it to the trash heap."cnbc.com