Silicon Valley robotics startups, including Figure AI, Sunday Robotics, and Weave Robotics, are focusing on laundry-folding robots as a first commercial task, having raised billions of dollars at lofty valuations. Laundry is considered an ideal task because it is difficult enough to showcase a machine's intelligence and physical control, yet safe enough that failure carries few consequences, according to roboticists. Teaching a robot to fold clothing has long been a "holy grail" because robots must handle "deformable objects" with precision, a task Figure described as "one of the most challenging dexterous manipulation tasks for a humanoid robot." Sunday CEO Tony Zhao said the company chose laundry partly because it "looks for hard things to do." Previous attempts failed, including the $16,000 Laundroid robot, whose Japanese company filed for bankruptcy in 2019, and FoldiMate, which never shipped a product. Today's startups cite advances in AI, cheaper hardware, and capital as reasons for a different outcome. However, the latest robots are expensive, their reliability in real homes remains unknown, a single item can still take minutes to fold, and unfamiliar clothing can stump the machines. Sunday plans to place its robot in homes through a beta program this year.