K-Scale Labs · United States · Mid-size
K-Scale Labs K-Bot
America's first genuinely open-source, sub-$9k full-size humanoid, and a cautionary tale: K-Scale Labs shut down in November 2025 and cancelled every preorder, leaving the 140 cm, 20-joint design alive only as freed open-source CAD, a Rust OS, and AI models you can fork and build yourself.
No longer sold
Verified last monthWhat is in the crate
3 included|4 not included
Grippers, not dexterous hands
Ships with modular, swappable end-effectors (grippers) rather than dexterous multi-fingered hands. The design is explicitly built so developers can swap in different end-effectors for different tasks, but no fully-articulated hand product is a standard included option.
In the crate
Reality check
You cannot buy this: K-Scale Labs ran out of runway and shut down in November 2025, cancelling all preorders and refunding deposits after shipping only two units. What is left is the open-source release (CAD, K-OS, K-Sim, K-VLA), so the K-Bot is now a build-it-yourself project with no company behind it, not a product.
Can you get one, and what will it cost?
A planning estimate with machine, freight, duty, and tax shown separately.
You cannot order the K-Scale Labs K-Bot today: it is discontinued.
Nobody can order one: the company is closed and all preorders were cancelled and refunded. The only remaining path is self-building from the open-source hardware and software K-Scale released on shutdown, which requires serious robotics and manufacturing capability.
Import requirements for United StatesConformity, battery shipping, paperwork, and source documents. Review before ordering.
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Open the import referenceAvailability
Catalog checked 2026-09
This model is discontinued, and no seller lists it.
Nobody can order one: the company is closed and all preorders were cancelled and refunded. The only remaining path is self-building from the open-source hardware and software K-Scale released on shutdown, which requires serious robotics and manufacturing capability.
Price notes: No longer for sale. K-Scale Labs shut down in November 2025 after failing to secure a lead investor: it laid off most of its team, cancelled all K-Bot preorders, and refunded every deposit (only two units ever shipped before the wind-down). The old $8,999 "Founder's Edition" price is historical. What survives is the open-source release: on shutdown K-Scale published all of its IP (mechanical CAD, the K-OS Rust operating system, K-Sim, and K-VLA models) under open licenses. You cannot buy a K-Bot; you can only build from the freed designs.
No seller listing is recorded. Check the sources below for the maker’s latest information.
Prices remain in the seller’s listed currency. Tax, freight, options, and rental periods follow each seller’s terms. A seller’s region does not guarantee delivery to your address.
How the K-Scale Labs K-Bot rates
Editorial ratings based on listed specifications and sales availability. They do not measure task performance, autonomy, or reliability.
- Class
- Frontier machineA cutting-edge full-scale humanoid aimed at real work. Mostly enterprise, or still proving out.
- CapabilityHardware specification indicators
- 3/5
- Baseline: any humanoid+1
- Degrees of freedom: 20 DOF+1
- Dexterity: grippers, not dexterous hands+0.25
- Scale: 140 cm tall+0.5
Key specifications
Height
140 cm
Width
n/a
Depth
n/a
Weight
34 kg
Degrees of freedom
20
Battery
~240 min
Payload
10 kg
Top speed
n/a
Understand before you buy
Featured in
The K-Scale Labs K-Bot is no longer sold
The maker has ended this line, so there is no route to a new unit at any price. Register to hear what replaces it, and what a used one is really worth.
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Size to scale
Drawn next to a 1.80 m (5 ft 11 in) person. Every robot on the site uses this same reference, so you can trust the comparison at a glance.
K-Scale Labs K-Bot: 140 cm / 4 ft 7 in, 34 kg
What it does on day onewith zero programming
Out of the box the K-Bot can stand, walk, balance (recovering from a shove), and obey simple commands via a mobile app or voice. It also supports low-latency teleoperation, so you can drive its upper body and locomotion by mirroring a human operator. Beyond that baseline, everything is developer work.
Best for: Robotics and AI developers who want to fork and self-build from a fully open humanoid stack, understanding the company behind it no longer exists and there is no unit to buy or support to call.
What it takes to developskills, gear, and SDK access
Real robotics/ML engineering. You work in the open-source stack: K-OS (Rust) on the robot, K-Sim for reinforcement-learning in simulation (MuJoCo/JAX/PyTorch tooling), and K-VLA vision-language-action models. Expect Python and Rust, familiarity with RL and sim-to-real, and the willingness to build skills yourself. It is an alpha, developer-first platform, not plug-and-play.
SDK access: Fully open-source: software under GPLv3, hardware under CERN-OHL-S. Public GitHub (github.com/kscalelabs) with kbot, kos-kbot, ksim-kbot, and kbot-inference repositories, plus docs at docs.kscale.dev. The stack spans K-OS (onboard Rust OS), K-Sim (RL/simulation), and K-VLA (VLA models), with mechanical CAD and electrical schematics published for modification.
Sources and verification
Next step
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