Y Combinator 2024 cohort star project K-Scale Labs announced today that it will cease operations. CEO Ben Bolt revealed in a Discord announcement that the company has about $400,000 in remaining cash and is unable to deliver the previously pre-sold desktop humanoid robot DevKit, starting a refund and liquidation process from today.

K-Scale Labs was founded in 2024, focusing on an "open source + commercialized components" strategy, reducing the full machine BOM cost to below $1,500 and opening all CAD and code. It raised $4 million in seed funding at Demo Day last year, with a post-money valuation of $50 million. However, Bolt admitted in an email to investors that the speed of price reductions in the Chinese supply chain exceeded expectations: after the release of Unitree G1, the entry-level price was directly lowered to $3,200, making K-Scale's $2,999 pre-sale price lose its cost-effectiveness instantly. At the same time, US domestic manufacturing, logistics, and tariffs continued to increase costs, "driving the gross margin into negative."

The company once sought a $10-15 million Series A round for survival and discussed acquisitions with two American robotics manufacturers, but ultimately failed due to "insufficient order volume" and "technical route differences." Core engineers began leaving from September. K-Scale's collapse dealt another blow to the humanoid robot industry: this year, several other star companies such as Aldebaran and Embodied (Moxie) have already applied for bankruptcy or shut down.

Industry insiders point out that embodied intelligence is still in the stage of "high investment, low delivery," with fast hardware iteration and high capital requirements. Even with open source, it is difficult to offset the scale disadvantage. K-Scale's failure reminds entrepreneurs: a low-price strategy must be matched with a sustainable supply chain and cash flow; otherwise, "open source" cannot save the day.