Nori is a New York based robotics startup selling the NORI L3, a bimanual home and office robot priced at $1,688 and slated to ship from US assembly in fall 2026. Out of the box it handles common household chores like loading the dishwasher, folding laundry, and tidying up, and owners can extend it to unusual tasks ( washing paintbrushes if you're an artist or flipping sheet music while you play guitar ) by training new skills through a laptop app that requires no code, or by building on top of an open-source dev kit. The robot can also be driven remotely as a telepresence stand-in, and the hardware is designed to be physically customizable.
The launch matters because bimanual manipulators have generally started around $20,000 and rarely leave the lab. Nori builds home robots that cost less than $2,000 and that anyone can teach , and the team gets there by using low-cost servos with smarter control, a wheeled base with a lift for floor-to-counter reach in place of legs, and streamlined US assembly. The pricing and pre-order model put a working bimanual robot within reach of hobbyists, researchers, and small operators who have been priced out of the category.
Nori was founded in 2026 by Antonio Sitong Li, who studied CS and Architecture at Columbia and previously researched teaching robots tasks through VR demonstration across the Laidlaw, Data Science Institute, and Graphics and UI Lab fellowships. The company is backed by Y Combinator and has around five employees in New York City, with the broader thesis that a shared skill library from trained users will compound the robot's capabilities over time.
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K
Kwesi BoatengAug 8, 2026
The $1,688 price tag is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that headline. Curious if that's the actual shipped BOM or the 'we'll figure out margins later' tier.
S
sagarAug 8, 2026
This might genuinely be the last major robotics launch before every demo is just 'agent picks up sock, agent contemplates existence.' Screenshot this post.
P
Priya R.Aug 8, 2026
Launch video pacing is chef's kiss for the first 8 seconds, then loses me around the folding laundry cut. Whoever edited this understood the hook assignment though.
T
Tomás LópezAug 8, 2026
Teach it to do anything? Great, teaching mine to file my taxes and ghost my landlord.
Y
Yukio N.Aug 8, 2026
How open is the SDK? Asking because a hackable arm at this price with decent docs would nuke half the hobby robotics market overnight.
A
Anneliese FreiAug 8, 2026
Reply-guy hat on: the product shots have a slightly warm white balance while the UI mockups are cool blue. Pick a temperature and commit.
M
Mara BenziAug 8, 2026
Reporter here, would love 10 minutes with the team about the supply chain math on that price. Happy to keep things off the record until you're ready.
R
Reem AzadAug 8, 2026
Procurement question that will bore everyone here: any plan for a business tier with warranty, RMA process, and net-60 terms? Small labs would buy 20 of these tomorrow.
L
Linh PhamAug 8, 2026
First-tap UX question: how long from unboxing to the robot doing literally one useful thing? If it's more than 20 minutes you've already lost the consumer buyer.
O
Oskar VindbergAug 8, 2026
One more thing for the roadmap: voice teaching mode. Just talk to it while demonstrating and let it correlate speech to motion. You'll thank me later.
J
Juno AdeyemiAug 8, 2026
Been telling my followers I'm '3 weeks from launching' my kitchen robot for 7 months. Guess I'm shelving that Notion doc now.
C
Chidi OnyekaAug 8, 2026
Every 'teach it anything' demo I've ever seen was one specific banana on one specific counter under one specific lighting rig. Prove me wrong with an unedited five minute clip.
B
Boris KluevAug 8, 2026
The thumbnail with the robot mid-pour is doing more marketing work than the entire landing page copy. Whoever framed that shot deserves equity.
A
Amelina WuAug 8, 2026
How big is the team behind this? If it's under 15 people shipping actual physical hardware at this price I'm going to have to lie down.
F
Farrukh QodirovAug 8, 2026
Compared to the last handful of robotics launches in this category, the tweet copy is refreshingly short. No 47-post thread, no 'why we built this' essay, just the thing. More of that.
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Nori is a New York based robotics startup selling the NORI L3, a bimanual home and office robot priced at $1,688 and slated to ship from US assembly in fall 2026. Out of the box it handles common household chores like loading the dishwasher, folding laundry, and tidying up, and owners can extend it to unusual tasks ( washing paintbrushes if you're an artist or flipping sheet music while you play guitar ) by training new skills through a laptop app that requires no code, or by building on top of an open-source dev kit. The robot can also be driven remotely as a telepresence stand-in, and the hardware is designed to be physically customizable. The launch matters because bimanual manipulators have generally started around $20,000 and rarely leave the lab. Nori builds home robots that cost less than $2,000 and that anyone can teach , and the team gets there by using low-cost servos with smarter control, a wheeled base with a lift for floor-to-counter reach in place of legs, and streamlined US assembly. The pricing and pre-order model put a working bimanual robot within reach of hobbyists, researchers, and small operators who have been priced out of the category. Nori was founded in 2026 by Antonio Sitong Li, who studied CS and Architecture at Columbia and previously researched teaching robots tasks through VR demonstration across the Laidlaw, Data Science Institute, and Graphics and UI Lab fellowships. The company is backed by Y Combinator and has around five employees in New York City, with the broader thesis that a shared skill library from trained users will compound the robot's capabilities over time.
Comments (15)
The $1,688 price tag is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that headline. Curious if that's the actual shipped BOM or the 'we'll figure out margins later' tier.
This might genuinely be the last major robotics launch before every demo is just 'agent picks up sock, agent contemplates existence.' Screenshot this post.
Launch video pacing is chef's kiss for the first 8 seconds, then loses me around the folding laundry cut. Whoever edited this understood the hook assignment though.
Teach it to do anything? Great, teaching mine to file my taxes and ghost my landlord.
How open is the SDK? Asking because a hackable arm at this price with decent docs would nuke half the hobby robotics market overnight.
Reply-guy hat on: the product shots have a slightly warm white balance while the UI mockups are cool blue. Pick a temperature and commit.
Reporter here, would love 10 minutes with the team about the supply chain math on that price. Happy to keep things off the record until you're ready.
Procurement question that will bore everyone here: any plan for a business tier with warranty, RMA process, and net-60 terms? Small labs would buy 20 of these tomorrow.
First-tap UX question: how long from unboxing to the robot doing literally one useful thing? If it's more than 20 minutes you've already lost the consumer buyer.
One more thing for the roadmap: voice teaching mode. Just talk to it while demonstrating and let it correlate speech to motion. You'll thank me later.
Been telling my followers I'm '3 weeks from launching' my kitchen robot for 7 months. Guess I'm shelving that Notion doc now.
Every 'teach it anything' demo I've ever seen was one specific banana on one specific counter under one specific lighting rig. Prove me wrong with an unedited five minute clip.
The thumbnail with the robot mid-pour is doing more marketing work than the entire landing page copy. Whoever framed that shot deserves equity.
How big is the team behind this? If it's under 15 people shipping actual physical hardware at this price I'm going to have to lie down.
Compared to the last handful of robotics launches in this category, the tweet copy is refreshingly short. No 47-post thread, no 'why we built this' essay, just the thing. More of that.