Nori Robotics unveils L3 and offers free upgrades to L2 buyers
Preorders open July 29th as Antonio Sitong Li's four-person YC company revises its low-cost home-robot line before fall shipments.
By Ryan Merket · Published
Why it matters
Nori Robotics is testing whether bimanual home robots can sell near appliance prices, with L3's credibility resting on specifications, delivery and support from a four-person company.
Nori Robotics, founded by Antonio Sitong Li (@AntonioSitongLi), unveiled the Nori L3 on Tuesday and said preorders will open July 29th, extending the young hardware company's push to sell bimanual home robots at prices closer to consumer appliances than industrial automation systems.
https://x.com/norirobotics/status/2082183464695288027?s=46
"Human dexterity just got a lot cheaper," Nori Robotics said in a two-post thread on X. Nori Robotics also promised a free L3 upgrade to customers who already ordered the earlier Nori L2.
The announcement did not give an L3 price, specifications or shipping schedule. As of July 28th, Nori Robotics' website still foregrounded the Nori L2, a wheeled, dual-arm robot priced at $1,288, and the taller L2 Grande at $1,322. Nori Robotics markets both models for household work including loading dishes, making coffee, cleaning and sorting laundry.
The timing matters for early customers. Nori Robotics' preorder page says its first batch sold out, without specifying the number of units. The second batch requires a $128 deposit and is scheduled to ship in fall 2026. Those orders include access to an open-source codebase and $100 off the final price. The free upgrade keeps those buyers from receiving an older model after Nori Robotics revised its hardware before the stated delivery window.
From a Columbia project to a commercial robot
Li founded Nori Robotics in 2026 and entered Y Combinator's Summer 2026 batch. YC lists Nori Robotics as a four-person company based in New York City that manufactures robots in San Francisco.
Li studies computer science and architecture at Columbia and has worked across robotics, interface design and data visualization. YC says he was a research fellow at Columbia's Graphics and User Interfaces Lab, where he worked on using virtual reality demonstrations to set task goals for robot teams. He also researched relational database visualization under Columbia professor Eugene Wu.
His earlier work included procedural and parametric design. At a 2024 Columbia-Barnard research fair, Li presented software that generated accessibility-ramp designs by balancing slope, height and physical obstacles. YC says Li also previously built anti-interview-cheating software that reached 2,000 users, a figure attributed to the accelerator's founder profile.
Li's technical path toward Nori Robotics appeared in a May 2026 Columbia course project published on arXiv. Li and co-authors Sungjoon Park and Wen Ni Chew described Nori Bot, a $947 dual-arm mobile manipulator with 17 degrees of freedom, a 600-millimeter vertical lift and a Raspberry Pi 4. The prototype used motor-current measurements to estimate gripping force and protect low-cost servos from damage.
That project addressed the compromises behind inexpensive robot hardware. Li and his co-authors compared Nori Bot with XLeRobot, an open-source dual-arm mobile robot with a basic parts cost of about $660. XLeRobot's bill excludes 3D printing, tools, shipping and taxes, leaving assembly and integration to the builder. Nori Robotics is attempting to package similar low-cost components into a product that customers can preorder rather than construct themselves.
Price is only the first test
Nori Robotics says the L2 can perform chores autonomously, share trained tasks through a skills marketplace and accept remote operation. Those capabilities remain company claims. Nori Robotics has published product demonstrations and preorder terms, while the number of completed customer deliveries and real-world reliability data are not part of the L3 announcement.
The advertised L2 pricing already undercuts walking humanoids such as the Unitree R1, which starts at $4,900. Nori Robotics achieves a different form factor: wheels instead of legs, paired arms for manipulation and a vertical lift for reaching surfaces at different heights. For household chores, that trade can reduce hardware cost without removing the two-handed manipulation central to Nori Robotics' pitch.
The July 29th preorder terms will determine how far L3 advances that design. Price, reach, payload, autonomy, safety and delivery timing will matter more than the model-number change. Nori Robotics is asking buyers to trust a four-person, months-old hardware company with manufacturing, software support and home deployment. The L3 announcement preserves those early orders. Shipping capable machines at the advertised price will decide whether Li's research-driven cost reductions become a repeatable hardware business.