Mona is a bipedal humanoid robot developed by Kind Humanoid, a startup founded in 2023 in Palo Alto, California by Christoph Kohstall — a former Stanford scientist and member of Google's robotics team. Kind Humanoid built Mona as a general-purpose home and care robot, with an unusually strong emphasis on warm, human-centered industrial design: the renowned designer Yves Béhar and his firm fuseproject created Mona's bio-inspired exterior. In January 2025, Kind Humanoid was acquired by 1X Technologies, the company behind the NEO home humanoid.
Availability
Mona was never a commercial product. It was a startup prototype, developed by a very small team (reportedly around three people) that began in a garage with minimal investment. There is no list price and no purchasing path. Following the January 2025 acquisition by 1X Technologies, Kind Humanoid's team and technology were folded into 1X's household-robot effort — so Mona's lineage now effectively continues inside 1X's NEO program rather than as a standalone product.
Full Specifications
Kind Humanoid did not publish a formal spec sheet; Mona was an evolving prototype. What is known is qualitative.
| Aspect | Detail |
|---|---|
| Type | Bipedal general-purpose humanoid; demonstrated first steps and basic body control |
| Design | Bio-inspired exterior by Yves Béhar / fuseproject — soft diamond-shaped head with a dynamic mood display, "kimono-inspired" v-cut torso, light bronze color palette |
| AI | Integrated large language models (GPT-family) for natural-language understanding; designed to interpret commands and adapt without task-specific coding |
| Build philosophy | Deliberately low-cost, lightweight, and highly compliant; built largely from budget components to keep assistive humanoids affordable |
| Intended use | Home assistance and care (including elderly care) |
Model Breakdown
Mona existed only as a prototype (Kind Humanoid also referred to an "Olympia" prototype in its development). There was no production lineup. The company's goal was a general-purpose robot — capable of reasoning about arbitrary tasks via LLMs — rather than a single-task machine.
Buyer's Guide: What to Know
You cannot buy a Mona. It was a pre-product prototype, and Kind Humanoid no longer exists as an independent company.
Its significance is the design and the talent. Mona stood out for proving a credible humanoid could be built cheaply by a tiny team, and for its unusually warm, human-centered industrial design — both of which attracted 1X.
Its future is inside 1X. With the 2025 acquisition, the relevant product to watch is 1X's NEO line; Mona's people and ideas now contribute there.
Mona vs Similar Robots
- Mona vs 1X NEO Gamma: Directly relevant — Mona's team joined 1X, and NEO Gamma is the shipping home humanoid that Mona's work now feeds into.
- Mona vs Figure 03: Both targeted home use with LLM-driven interaction and design-led, approachable forms; Figure 03 advanced to a production-oriented program while Mona was absorbed by an acquirer.
- Mona vs Tesla Optimus: Opposite ends of the resource spectrum — Optimus is a massively funded mass-production effort; Mona was a three-person, budget-component garage project.
