Clone Robotics, Inc. is officially entering the uncanny valley of home robotics with the Clone Alpha, a musculoskeletal android for which the company will only produce 279 units. Pre-orders for this limited edition helper, which looks like it walked straight off the set of a sci-fi blockbuster, are slated to open in 2025. The oddly specific production number has industry watchers whispering it might be a nod to the HBO series Westworld, where a character is revealed to be the 279th version of a recreated consciousness.
The Clone Alpha comes with a laundry list of pre-installed skills that read like a desperate homeowner’s wish list. It promises to memorize your home’s layout, make you sandwiches, pour drinks, wash and fold clothes, vacuum, and even engage in “witty dialogue.” For skills not included out of the box, owners can use the grandiosely named “Telekinesis” training platform to teach the android new tricks. While the price remains unannounced, a co-founder has likened it to a “limited edition supercar,” so expect the cost to be astronomical.
The secret sauce is Clone Robotics’ proprietary Myofiber technology, an artificial muscle system the company has been developing since 2021. Instead of conventional electric actuators, the Clone Alpha uses these water-powered muscles attached to a polymer skeleton, mimicking human anatomy with startling accuracy. A single three-gram Myofiber can reportedly generate a kilogram of force and contract over 30% of its length in under 50 milliseconds. The entire biomimetic system is managed by an NVIDIA Jetson Thor GPU, processing data from a suite of depth cameras and sensors.
Why is this important?
Clone Robotics is sidestepping the industrial-first approach of competitors like Tesla and Figure, opting instead for an ultra-high-end consumer launch. This strategy positions the Clone Alpha not as a factory worker, but as a luxury good—a statement piece that also happens to do your laundry. By building an android around a complete, anatomically correct musculoskeletal system, the company is making a bold and expensive bet on biomimicry over traditional mechanics. The Clone Alpha is less a robot and more of a synthetic organism, and its success could prove whether there’s a market for androids that are as much about form and biological fidelity as they are about function.
