Fauna Robotics Sprout

Sprout is a small (107 cm, 22.7 kg) bipedal humanoid from New York-based Fauna Robotics, sold as a developer platform for researchers, schools and companies building applications for robots that work around people. It has a soft exterior, torque-limited joints and an expressive head with moving eyebrows. Amazon acquired Fauna in March 2026.

History and launch

Fauna Robotics was founded in New York in 2024 by Rob Cochran, former head of product at Meta-acquired neural interface startup CTRL-labs, and Josh Merel, a former Google DeepMind research scientist. On January 27, 2026 it came out of stealth and began shipping Sprout as a Creator Edition; a technical report with 49 authors appeared on arXiv the day before.

Amazon acquired Fauna in March 2026, confirming the deal on March 24-25 without disclosing terms. The roughly 50-person team joined Amazon's Personal Robotics Group, and the company continues as "Fauna Robotics, an Amazon company", still selling Sprout. Fauna had raised $16.6 million before the acquisition.

Hardware

At 107 cm and 22.7 kg, Sprout can be carried around and can even sit on a chair. It has 29 degrees of freedom including its eyebrows; heise reports 5 per leg and 6 per 48 cm arm, with three-finger grippers as hands and a head and torso that turn and tilt.

An aluminium and composite frame is covered in a soft, rubber-like skin with minimised pinch points. Other safety measures include a low centre of gravity, compliant motor control that yields to external forces, software torque limits and four time-of-flight sensors for obstacle avoidance.

Compute is an NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin 64 GB with a 1 TB SSD. Sensing includes a ZED 2i stereo camera, a four-microphone array and an IMU. A swappable lithium-ion battery gives 3-3.5 hours. According to heise, Sprout can briefly lift up to 11.2 kg (under 10 seconds, in a specific arm pose) and handle about 1 kg continuously.

Software and AI

Sprout ships with trained motion policies for walking, stair climbing, kneeling, crawling, sitting, jumping, dancing and waving, plus built-in mapping and localisation and VR-based full-body teleoperation. The AI stack is modular, so teams can swap in their own models anywhere.

The SDK supports Python and C++, Foxglove visualisation and simulation in NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Gazebo and MuJoCo. The robot can be directed by voice for tasks and navigation, and it expresses emotion through its eyebrows, LED face displays and body language.

Applications

Fauna names Disney, Boston Dynamics, UC San Diego and NYU as early customers, with target areas in retail, entertainment, home services and education rather than industry, for which its payload is too small. NYU professor Ludovic Righetti said a smaller, safer robot lets students experiment more boldly.

Price and availability

Sprout costs about $50,000 and is sold to researchers, educators and commercial developers through Fauna's request form. It is designed in New York and assembled in the US, with data handling and support also based in the US.

Timeline

• 2024 Fauna Robotics founded in New York
• 2026-01 Sprout Creator Edition launched and shipping; arXiv technical report
• 2026-03 Amazon acquires Fauna Robotics

Sources

1. Fauna Robotics Unveils Sprout: A Lightweight, Interactive, and Capable Developer-Ready Humanoid Platform, Fauna Robotics (2026-01-27)
2. Fauna Sprout: A lightweight, approachable, developer-ready humanoid robot, arXiv (2026-01-26)
3. Fauna Robotics launches Sprout humanoid robot for research and development, heise online (2026-01-29)
4. Amazon acquires Fauna Robotics and its approachable humanoid Sprout, The Next Web (2026-03-25)
5. Company, Fauna Robotics (2026-10)

Updated: 2026-10-10

Compared with the catalogue

• It is the only Fauna Robotics model in the catalogue and one of 43 humanoids from USA.

Capabilities