Hospitals And Hotels Rent Robots Instead Of Buying
Get the Tech newsletter
Daily tech — startups, AI labs, chips, the launches that shape the next decade. Free.
- Diligent Robotics runs about 100 Moxi hospital delivery robots in the US under a robotics-as-a-service model that bundles service, maintenance, and software upgrades, with a remote engineer able to take control if needed.
- 1X plans to ship its NEO home-helper robot later this year, letting early-access US customers choose between a $20,000 outright purchase or a $499 per month subscription.
- Formic operates more than 250 industrial robots on a flat-monthly-fee RaaS basis, replacing burnt-out arms at its own cost, and is currently testing humanoid robots for industrial uses.
- Shanghai's Agibot rents humanoid robots in 17 countries including the UK, while other Chinese firms lease machines to hotels and cleaning services as a training ground for future domestic deployment.
- Humanoid rentals currently skew toward entertainment — dance routines, weddings, corporate events — because the technology is immature and often relies on motion-captured video of real performers, according to Counterpoint Research's Ethan Qi.
- Rental pricing models are evolving: Interact Analysis analyst Marco Wang says some companies now want fees tied directly to how much human labor a robot displaces.
- Outright purchases may still dominate in China, where state-owned companies are placing large humanoid orders driven by government subsidies, per the same analyst.
Why it matters: A $499/month NEO or Formic's flat monthly fee replaces six-figure capital outlays for hospitals and small factories while protecting buyers from yearly hardware obsolescence. For robotics vendors, each rented unit doubles as a paid field test feeding data back into humanoid models that analysts describe as still immature.
Ask SkimNews
.jpg)