China’s robot vacuum Roborock plans mass-market cleaners with AI arms

BEIJING — Household robots for cleaning are about to quickly become an affordable reality.

At least that’s what Quan Gang, president of Beijing-based robot vacuum cleaner company Roborock, has in mind as he strategizes for the next five years. The company ranks first among smart vacuums by global market share, according to IDC Research. Last week, it reported a nearly 79% revenue surge in the first half of this year. About half of sales came from outside China.

In an exclusive interview with CNBC on Wednesday, Quan predicted that human-like robots will become part of many households by 2030, thanks largely to advances in generative artificial intelligence.

And before then, he expects, Roborock can make its latest, high-end cleaner with an AI-powered robotic arm so cheap that the mass market will be able to buy it — for at most a few hundred U.S. dollars.

“If we only focus on the premium segment, in the end, other than being the best robotic vacuum cleaner company in the world, we will have nothing,” Quan said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC. He noted that robot vacuums still don’t have a very high household penetration rate.

China, the largest market for the robot vacuums by value, has a penetration rate of only 5.6%, while the United States, the second-largest market, has a 22% penetration rate, according to Euromonitor estimates for 2025. The firm predicts penetration in the U.S. will tick up to 24.1% over the next two years, and edge down to 5.5% in China.

Competition in the robotic vacuum + robotic arm category heated up earlier this year at the U.S. Consumer Electronics Show, with Roborock and at least two other Chinese competitors releasing demos. The AI-powered arm removes obstacles from the cleaner’s path as it rolls autonomously around the house.

So far, only Roborock has started selling one, called the Saros Z70 — but with a hefty price tag of around $2,600 on amazon.com. The site shows 141 reviews and a 4.6 rating. Roborock did not share specific sales figures.

Initial reviews of the Saros Z70 from U.S. tech sites such as Mashable and Wired weren’t impressed, especially given the price, but hoped for more capable versions in the near future. Both recommended that consumers stick with the more traditional Roborock Saros 10R — which retails for $1,600.

Robot vacuum cleaner companies should develop products that “bridge cutting-edge technologies and mainstream price points to accelerate adoption,” said Jin Liu, senior analyst of small appliances at Euromonitor International.

But even if the price comes down, it would only be a small step toward having a robot help with cooking and other household chores.

Vacuum cleaners are the “only successful application [of robots] in our homes to date,” said Jeff Burnstein, president of the Association for Advancing Automation (A3). “This is after four decades of talking about how we’re going to have robots in our home.”

“What made the [robot] vacuum cleaner so successful is it didn’t cost that much,” he said. For the same thing to happen for humanoids to enter homes, he said, there needs to be a compelling quality for the price.

Humanoids, such as those from Chinese startup Unitree, still cost tens of thousands of U.S. dollars and don’t have clear household use cases yet.

Despite its mass market ambitions, Roborock said that because of tariffs, it had to raise the Saros Z70 price by $700 from the original $1,899.

Quan said Roborock started working with suppliers late last year in Vietnam, where he said the company can fulfill all its North American orders.

Looking ahead, he said the company is considering global supply chain partnerships, but not necessarily to invest in building its own factories. Roborock’s plans for a Hong Kong listing are primarily to raise capital for international expansion, Quan said, noting the company is also expanding beyond vacuums.

Despite Roborock’s 79% revenue surge, the company more than doubled its spending, largely on research and development, steepening the company’s losses in the first half of the year.

Quan said the company has hired nearly 100 AI experts this year and is still hiring — with an eye to add a total of nearly 200 AI experts this year. He said many of the new hires have overseas education or work experience.

The company built a dedicated AI lab in Shanghai and a research institute in Shenzhen, soon after Roborock’s founding in 2014. When asked about computing power, Quan said there are many solutions and that buying Nvidia chips aren’t the only option.

As for improving the AI-powered robotic arm and making it cheaper, “the challenge lies primarily with the algorithm and data,” he said, not the hardware.

As AI becomes more critical for household robots, Quan has an even bigger vision.

“If this robot in your home needs to clean, then it will have to integrate the cleaning knowledge that Roborock has accumulated over the years in algorithms, models, data and training,” he said. “Then it can be installed onto the robot like an app.”

“This robot may be Tesla’s, or Unitree’s, or someone else’s, … but in the area of cleaning, it will be inseparable from Roborock,” he said, claiming the company has the best data on cleaning tasks. Another company might have the best data for robots to cook, he said.

The humanoid market will likely reach $5 trillion by 2050, with $800 billion in China alone, according to Morgan Stanley estimates.

“With humanoids, if they can’t do more than one thing, then they’re competing against an existing form factor that can do one thing very well,” Burnstein said. But ne noted companies around the world expect there’s a big market for safe, affordable humanoids that can cook, clean, help the elderly and do other things.

“We’re not there yet with the technology, but maybe we’ll get there and maybe that multitasking would be the differentiator potentially,” he said. “So you wouldn’t need 5 robots. You might just need one.”