Menlo

What Is Menlo

Menlo Research builds robots that put AI to work in the physical world. Our two main products are:

  • Asimov, the most developer-friendly humanoid
  • Jan, the open-source AI agent that runs as its brain

Our Story

We build what we need, one part at a time.

We wanted to build a brain for robots. On January 1, 2024, we launched Jan, now one of the most-used open-source AI projects around. But a brain can't do much without a body, so we bought a humanoid to put Jan in. Its knee gave out, and we spent two months waiting on a single replacement part while everything ground to a halt. By then it was clear: a robot you can't fix yourself will always hold you back.

So we built our own. First a set of legs, then a torso, then a whole body, open-sourcing the designs along the way. Our team couldn't all share one robot, so we built a simulator and the tools to run it from anywhere, then solved sim2real. What came out the other side is the robot we wish we'd had: Asimov. We officially launched it in April 2026 and now ship to customers worldwide, from first concept to shipping in under a year.

Who We Are

We're a team from computing, engineering, and plenty else, working across Singapore, Vietnam, and the US. We built Jan in the open, and we build Asimov the same way: in public, with a community building alongside us.

Ishneet and Ariel walking Asimov along Marina Bay Sands

(And yes, we took the first humanoid ever onto the Singapore MRT, hailed it a cab, and walked it down to Marina Bay Sands!)

What We're Building

What Menlo is building and why.

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