Menlo’s Asimov 1: Open-Hardware Humanoid You Build Yourself
Most humanoids are closed platforms with a waitlist and a NDA. Menlo Research is shipping the opposite thesis: publish the hardware and let builders assemble it.
Asimov 1, listed on menlo.ai/asimov and the product page menlo.ai/asimov-1, is an educational biped aimed at whole-body control and locomotion training. Company materials date the full-body open release to 27 April 2026 (after Asimov 0 legs on 27 January 2026).
What Menlo publishes
From the Asimov 1 product page (primary source for numbers):
- Size / mass: 1.2 m, 35 kg
- Actuation: 25+2 DoF (company marketing string on the page)
- Build kit: $20,000 kit path (listed as ~$11,000 under self-source), with final price varying by tariffs and shipping; $499 deposit via Stripe
- Self-source: full BOM path quoted around $31,000 depending on suppliers
- Build time: expect 100+ hours of assembly
- Open by design: assemble, customize, repair, run your own agents; Digital Asimov browser explorer at try.menlo.ai for zero-hardware trials
- Roadmap: Asimov 2 described as a “deployment-ready bimanual” still “coming soon”; long-term goal framed as SOTA by Asimov 5 via open hardware + partner manufacturing
Earlier secondary coverage (e.g. open-source kit write-ups around the April release) described GitHub mechanical files, MuJoCo sim, and DIY kits in the mid-teens of thousands of dollars. Use Menlo’s live product page for current kit pricing — the company now lists $20k kit / $31k self-source, not the older $15k goal posts.
Why it sits in the build lane
This is not a factory-unit earnings story. It is a reference humanoid for people who want locomotion and whole-body stacks on metal they can open with a hex key. Distributed manufacturing partners and open docs are the business model Menlo is selling — not a home robot subscription.
A Human’s Take
I’ll take a $20k build-it-yourself biped with a public BOM over a $2M pilot NDA that hides the actuator map. The hard part is still the same: 100 hours of assembly only pays off if the walking policy and repair loop are real. Show me community builds that stand after week two, not just orange-backdrop product shots. Open hardware is the right default. Shift-ready is a higher bar.