Clone Robotics

In November 2021 three graduates of Wrocław University of Science and Technology and Dhanush Radhakrishnan founded Clone Robotics. Instead of electric actuators they bet on artificial Myofiber muscles and on building musculoskeletal androids. The first public results were a prototype robot hand with synthetic muscles, shown in January 2023, and in March 2023 a realistic hand priced at $2,800. In April 2024 came Protoclone, an earlier torso-and-head demonstrator, and in December 2024 the company presented Clone Alpha, the first full-size humanoid with synthetic muscles. Pre-orders for 279 units opened then as well, and the home robot with the Telekinesis training platform got a price and a specification. In 2026 Clone opened a second office in Mountain View, California, signaling a move beyond its Polish, Wrocław roots; the company plans expansion into Silicon Valley and a consumer price of around $20,000, and a new $50 million funding round is under way, after an earlier $17 million. This path looks like the script of a startup with ambitions far larger than its home market. You can read about the actuators Clone takes issue with in “Actuators in Humanoid Robots”, and about the operating principle itself in “How Does a Humanoid Robot Work”.

The portfolio is two prototypes. Clone Alpha is a humanoid running on synthetic hydraulic muscles instead of motors; a commercial product will appear only in 2028, and for now the uses are demonstrations and research. Clone Protoclone is the earlier torso-and-head demonstrator, Alpha's predecessor, with no commercial path of its own. The manufacturer's website discloses no numerical specifications such as height, mass and number of degrees of freedom, so we do not fill the gaps with guesses. The only hard points are the 279 pre-order units and a consumer price planned at around $20,000. For comparison: the budget Unitree R1 costs $5,900, and the home-oriented 1X NEO targets a similar audience. If you want to understand what degrees of freedom are, see “Degrees of Freedom (DOF) in Humanoid Robots”. The category is humanoid robots, and the intended home use is described at homes and laboratories. The technical premise itself is interesting: muscles instead of motors are meant to give movement closer to the human kind, but little is known so far about durability or the cost of series production. That is why the assessment of Alpha is best postponed until test data and the first deliveries appear. To compare classic drives, go back to the text on actuators, and the prices of other humanoids are collected in “How Much Does a Humanoid Robot Cost in 2026”.

Clone remains practically without direct competition using a comparable approach to muscles, which makes it hard to judge the maturity of the technology against rivals based on electric motors, such as Unitree Robotics or Fourier Intelligence. As a home-robot startup it competes with 1X Technologies and Figure AI, and in the race for money also with Tesla and its Optimus. External funding is $17 million with a $50 million round in progress: a small scale next to American counterparts, but large for a young startup from Poland. We have no confirmed end customers beyond the pre-order. We have collected the humanoid market and forecasts in “Humanoid Robot Market Forecasts” and prices in “How Much Does a Humanoid Robot Cost in 2026”. It is worth keeping the scale in mind: a few tens of millions of dollars in funding is a lot for a Polish startup, but American rivals count theirs in the hundreds of millions. Apptronik, which is also working on a humanoid, has raised, according to our catalog, $520 million at a $5 billion valuation; see Apptronik.

This is one of the few Polish examples in the humanoid segment: the company was founded in Wrocław and has its roots there. In 2026 it opened a second office in California, but we have no information on sales in Poland, dealers or deployments; both models are recorded as not available in Poland. The Alpha pre-sale was global, and we have no data on Polish customers. You will find a broader picture of domestic companies on the map at “Polish Robotics Companies”, and the local labor-market context in “Humanoid Robots and the Polish Labor Market”. It is also worth comparing with another domestic player, Creotech Instruments.

Clone Robotics is a bold Polish experiment with muscles instead of motors. The maturity of the technology is hard to judge: without a full specification and with a product only in 2028, it is still an announcement. Worth cheering for and following, but not for purchase planning. Advice: follow it, root for it, but do not plan a 2026 budget around it. There is not yet a product here that can be bought in Poland, and the pre-sale covered only 279 units.