Colin Angle put the Roomba in millions of homes by giving it a simple job: cleaning the floor.
Now, the longtime iRobot CEO wants his next home robot to do something harder to measure. His new startup, Boston-based Familiar Machines & Magic, has built a four-legged, pet-inspired robot meant to offer companionship, emotional support, and gentle nudges toward healthier routines.
The company calls the robot the Familiar, a reference to the supernatural animal companions associated with witches. Familiar Machines will start selling it next year, and while Angle declined to say how much it will cost, he said its upfront price will be comparable to buying a pet.
Familiar Machines said it has raised $30 million from undisclosed investors and recruited talent from iRobot, Boston Dynamics, and Disney. The company also hired Hollywood screenwriters to create stories that define the Familiar’s character and help train the AI model that powers the robot.
In the near term, Familiar Machines plans to market the robot to older adults who want some of the benefits of a pet without the responsibilities, as well as consumers looking to support their own well-being. Over time, the company hopes to license its AI to other companies.
Familiar Machines & Magic
Angle, who left iRobot in 2024 after more than three decades, said this opportunity looks different from the one he pursued with Roomba. (iRobot filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year following mounting financial struggles and a failed $1.4 billion acquisition deal with Amazon.)
He sees physical AI creating two big markets: machines that do physical work, and machines that can connect with people.
“Robots have long been associated with dull, dirty, dangerous, angular metal,” Angle told Business Insider. “What we’re trying to do is create something that uses robotic technology to a very different end.”
The interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
Business Insider: Tell us about the Familiar. How is it different from a Roomba?
Colin Angle: The Familiar is a pet-inspired robot that lives in your home, pays attention to you and your world, and supports you as an attentive physical presence that coaches you toward healthy routines.
It’s not trying to be a copy of a pet, though it’s certainly cute and accessible. It can understand what’s going on at home and nudge you in positive directions. The Roomba was much more single-purpose. It’s a vacuum. You know what it does, and you don’t expect to have a human connection to it. People did name their Roombas, but that was hardly the point.
Familiar Machines & Magic
Why would someone buy a Familiar over, say, a pet?
The core of a Familiar is that it has a personality. It has an appreciation for how humans like to interact with each other and with other creatures in our world.
How does it find a role in your life? That’s going to be a very individual exploration. Is it the thing that makes you happy because it’s waiting to greet you when you come home? Is it the thing that plays with your 5-year-old so they aren’t on their iPad? Do I have my Familiar smack me in the leg when I’ve been doomscrolling on the couch for 45 minutes and could have gone outside for a walk? Say your Familiar’s name is Daphne. You say, “Daphne, I’ve been doing this too long.” Daphne will get up from being curled up at your feet and run over to the door. The Familiar can play a role kind of like a pseudo-coach.
Let’s talk about the design. It’s cute, it doesn’t speak, and it’s meant to be emotionally intelligent. How did you arrive at that combination?
We wanted a beautiful, expressive physical form that people are not intimidated by and that doesn’t create expectations that will disappoint. There’s a reason why it doesn’t look like a human, cat, or dog. All of those morphologies create expectations that are challenging to deliver on. We’re more of an abstract bear.
Our coat is beautiful to touch. We’re layered in sensors, so as you touch it, it can respond. Even though the Familiar does not speak, it does understand human speech and will respond in an emotionally intelligent way.
That intelligence starts with us writing stories about what it means to be a Familiar. The stories were written by Hollywood scriptwriters, who wrote about these intelligent creatures that have a special connection with a person and about a day in their life. We then use generative AI to translate those stories into tens of thousands of mini stories and variations, and we use that to train the model that runs on the Familiar.
Familiar Machines & Magic
There are a lot of social robots that have failed in the past. How is this time different?
I have seen almost zero robots that are supposed to be about human connection take advantage of touch. Same with physical agency. We can move in your space. We can go for a walk with you. When you go to the kitchen to cook dinner, we could follow you and demonstrate, by that act, that we actually are part of your world. If I only live on a table, I don’t have much physical agency.
Then you add the fact that generative AI has given us the ability to perceive our environment and social context, recognize faces and emotional states, feed that into a small multimodal model trained on stories of supportive Familiars, and have that model output high-level, socially appropriate things to do.
Six months ago, some of this technology didn’t exist. We are combining all three things — touch, agency, and AI — to create something distinct from any robot that has ever existed.
Some people may be uneasy about bringing an emotionally intelligent robot into their home. How do you think about privacy, and how much of the AI runs on the robot itself?
Our whole AI stack runs on the robot. We do not need to stream anything to the cloud. Since the Familiar does not speak, it’s not going to convey information or bad advice, so you don’t need to worry about leaving your Familiar to talk about dating advice with a 4-year-old.
You can choose to connect it to the cloud, which lets its behavior take better advantage of what it has learned, adapt over time, and download new behaviors and features. If you do choose to connect, I call it Roomba Rules: you get control, transparency, and benefit.
You’ve spent decades building robots, and the industry has seen plenty of hype cycles. Does this moment feel different?
We are absolutely at an inflection point. Physical AI, this coming together of robotic technology and generative AI, has created the opportunity to disrupt the world in exciting ways. It’s estimated that $5 trillion of market value will be created over the next few decades. There’s a lot of energy focused on humanoids and manufacturing, but that’s about half of the theoretical value creation. The other half, $2.5 trillion, is focused on building machines that can actually connect and interact with people.
While most of the world is going one way on doing physical work, I am building a company that is going to lead the human-connection part of the physical AI transformation.
