Sunday Robotics says its robot can fold clothes it has never seen in unfamiliar homes

Sunday Robotics said Thursday it has developed an AI model that enables its wheeled home robot, Memo, to fold laundry in unfamiliar homes and on garments it has never seen before. The Bay Area startup unveiled ACT-2, which it said powered Memo to fold laundry successfully more than 99% of the time during testing in employees' homes and Airbnbs. CEO Tony Zhao said the breakthrough could drastically shrink the timeline for autonomous home robots in 2026. Sunday said ACT-2 transfers skills learned in one environment to another without costly retraining for each new home. The model is trained in two stages: first from human demonstrations using sensor-equipped gloves developed in-house, then refined by the company's robot fleet learning from mistakes. Sunday also proposed a new industry standard called a "Solve" to measure reliable robot capabilities versus flashy demos. Laundry folding is Memo's first Solve capability. The company, founded in 2024, raised $165 million earlier this year at a $1.15 billion valuation and has grown to more than 100 employees. Sunday plans a beta program placing Memo in homes this fall. Zhao declined to specify how many homes would participate. Memo will operate autonomously with remote operator assistance only when customers need help, similar to Waymo's approach. Sunday said it does not plan to use interventions to collect training data from customers' homes.