In 2026, four French companies are building a humanoid robot or have unveiled one. Wandercraft's Calvin has been in testing at Renault's Douai plant since February. Uma Robotics showed its Northstar prototype in July. Enchanted Tools launched the commercial version of Mirokaï in June. Pollen Robotics makes the open source Reachy and was acquired by Hugging Face in 2025. None of them sells to consumers. Public prices run from $13,500 for an entry-level Chinese robot to around €50,000 for a French service robot, plus a subscription.
Before deciding where to build, you want the map: the players, what their robots actually do, the prices, and the open spots in the value chain for a startup that will never manufacture a humanoid. Here it is.
French humanoid robots in 2026: who's who
🗺️ Four builders, one integrator, and a legacy. Each comes from a different background: medical exoskeletons, self-driving AI, the former Aldebaran team, and developmental robotics research.
Wandercraft: from the Atalante exoskeleton to Calvin at Renault
Wandercraft, a Paris scale-up, has spent more than ten years building self-balancing exoskeletons for rehabilitation (Atalante) and everyday life (Eve). Its industrial humanoid is called Calvin-40. According to an August 2026 investigation by Amphisciences, Ouest-France's science magazine, Calvin stands 1.70 m tall and has been working since February 2026 in the wheel shop of Renault's Douai plant. It picks up tyres two at a time, about thirty kilos per grab, with a payload of 40 to 50 kg. Most mobile robots top out between 3 and 10 kg.
It all started at a Cap Numérique conference on 1 October 2024, when a Renault robotics expert heard the words "humanoid robots." The announced roadmap: around ten robots in French and Spanish plants by the end of 2026, then 350 units by the end of 2027. Wandercraft is targeting a failure rate below 1 in 1,000 for Calvin, backed by the manufacturing standards it follows for medical devices.
Uma Robotics: Northstar, a prototype built in nine months
Uma, short for Universal Mechanical Assistant, came out of stealth in Paris in December 2025. Its co-founder and CEO, Rémi Cadène, spent about three years in Tesla's Autopilot group working on AI systems for the car and for Optimus, then led LeRobot, Hugging Face's open source robotics library. On 7 July 2026, at the Machina show in Paris, he presented Northstar, a bipedal prototype built in nine months, according to Futura and Electrek.
The prototype, still hanging from a safety cable, stays upright when pushed. Uma plans to rent its robots rather than sell them, is targeting manufacturing, logistics and the home, and has "50 potential customers" in talks, according to Electrek. It has not shipped a product yet.
Enchanted Tools: Mirokaï, the service robot with a face
Founded in 2021 by Jérôme Monceaux and Samuel Benveniste, both Aldebaran alumni, Enchanted Tools builds the Mirokaï: service robots with expressive heads and articulated ears, designed as characters rather than machines. On 16 June 2026, the company launched the commercial version of its robots at its urban factory in Paris's 11th arrondissement, a 300 m² pilot line opened at the end of 2024.
Jérôme Monceaux described the use cases to the Journal du Net in March 2026: assistance, monitoring and emotional support in healthcare, with deployments in paediatric radiotherapy at the Institut du Cancer de Montpellier and in AP-HP nursing homes. The company was producing robots "by the dozen" and is aiming for hundreds this year, then a thousand.
Pollen Robotics: Reachy, the open source humanoid from Bordeaux
Pollen Robotics was founded in Bordeaux in 2016 by two former researchers from Inria's Flowers team. It builds Reachy, an open source humanoid launched at CES 2020, with about a hundred units in use across some twenty countries. On 14 April 2025, Hugging Face announced its acquisition of Pollen Robotics, its fifth acquisition, to sell open source robots and connect them to LeRobot.
Reachy is a research and development platform that can be teleoperated in virtual reality. Labs and product teams buy it as a base to build on.
Korben for People and others
Korben for People is a French company founded by Lucas Goumarre, a pharmacist by training. It publishes multi-brand fleet management software for service robots, priced at around €150 excl. VAT per robot per month according to Robot Magazine, and it resells and rents cleaning, reception and logistics robots to retailers and restaurants. A TF1 report in January 2026 showed a humanoid from its catalogue, valued at €150,000, headed for a nuclear site. Korben is an integrator and software publisher; the robot itself comes from another manufacturer.
Other names come up too: the "Nio" robot from a French company, which is not a humanoid, mentioned on Reddit; and public labs such as LORIA in Nancy and LAAS-CNRS in Toulouse, which run Unitree G1 and H1 robots for locomotion research.
NAO, Pepper, Aldebaran: the legacy
France was a pioneer. NAO, designed by Aldebaran in Paris, is still the best-known humanoid robot and has been in schools and labs since 2006. Then came Pepper, then Plato. Aldebaran, which passed under Japanese and then German ownership, entered receivership on 17 February 2025, cut 80 of its 167 jobs, and received two takeover bids in spring 2025, according to La Tribune. Part of France's humanoid ecosystem descends from that team: the founders of Enchanted Tools come from it.
What humanoid robots actually do in 2026
🏭 Two arenas and one hard limit. Factories and services, plus a list of things no humanoid can yet do reliably.
In the factory: tyres, two at a time
Renault runs 11,000 six-axis robots across 23 plants, each one bolted to a single station and a single task. Calvin moves around, perceives its surroundings with a depth camera and force sensors under its feet, and empties seven to eight carts of 24 tyres in an hour and a half. Repetitive heavy lifting is one of the leading causes of musculoskeletal disorders in the auto industry, which is why it is the first job the robot gets.
The Amphisciences article also describes the ongoing work: every week, the Renault and Wandercraft teams adjust the camera height, the leg length and the software. Deploying a humanoid means weekly integration work that starts on delivery day.
In services: reception, light logistics, monitoring
According to their founder, Enchanted Tools' Mirokaï rely on three building blocks: social interaction, social navigation, and manipulation around people. They keep a child company alone in a radiotherapy room, guide nursing home residents, and carry small objects. At Korben, service robots clean hypermarkets and greet diners in restaurants. Most of them run on wheels; the humanoid is the exception.
The limits in 2026
Yann LeCun, speaking to MIT Technology Review in January 2026, was blunt: demos of dancing robots are "planned in advance," and "absolutely nobody" knows how to make these robots smart enough to be generally useful. Every task requires a mass of teleoperation data, and generalisation to a slightly different environment remains weak. The scientific reviews cited by Amphisciences point to the same bottlenecks: battery life, robustness, and safety around humans.
A humanoid sold in 2026 performs one bounded task, in a prepared environment, with a team tuning it.
How much does a humanoid robot cost
💶 Three price tiers, and a fourth you don't see. The research robot, the service robot, the industrial robot, and then integration.
Public prices: from Unitree to Optimus
| Robot | Manufacturer | Public price | Source, date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unitree G1 | Unitree (China) | "from $13,500" | unitree.com, accessed 5 Sept. 2026 |
| Mirokaï | Enchanted Tools (France) | "around €50,000 to buy," plus a monthly subscription of several hundred euros | Journal du Net, 30 March 2026 |
| Humanoid in the Korben catalogue | integrator Korben for People | "valued at €150,000" | TF1 Info, January 2026 |
| Calvin-40 | Wandercraft (France) | not public, industrial deployment on quote | wandercraft.eu |
| Northstar | Uma (France) | not public, rental model announced | Futura, Electrek, July 2026 |
| Optimus | Tesla (United States) | not public; Electrek reported in January 2026 that no Optimus is doing "useful work" yet | Electrek, July 2026 |
The Unitree G1 is the entry price for the global market. According to Génération Robots, LORIA chose it for its performance-to-budget ratio, code access and user community. At the other end, Figure runs its robots on shifts at BMW in Spartanburg but does not publish a price.
Buy, rent, or robot-as-a-service
Enchanted Tools is moving toward robot-as-a-service, but gradually: building a robot requires heavy upfront spending, and a subscription spreads revenue over time. Uma is going straight to rental. Korben charges a subscription for its fleet software and offers RaaS on hardware. The question "how much does the robot cost" becomes "how much does a robot-hour cost."
The hidden cost: integration and operations
A Mirokaï contains around 1,500 parts, comparable in complexity to a compact car, according to its founder; a shortage of one minor part halts production. On the customer side, the real cost sits in site integration, training, maintenance and the weekly tuning seen at Renault, none of which shows up in any public price.
Humanoid or not: choosing the right form factor
🤔 The question Reddit asks and manufacturers sidestep. "The humanoid form factor promises more than it delivers," reads the title of one French-language thread.
Why a human shape
The manufacturers' argument is the one Lucas Goumarre gave TF1: "tasks are designed for human beings." A site built for arms, hands and legs can take a humanoid without any modifications. That is the thesis behind Calvin in an existing factory, and behind Uma's manufacturing pitch.
When an arm or a wheeled base is enough
If the task is fixed, a six-axis arm costs less and breaks down less often. If the floor is flat and the load rolls, a mobile base does the job: that is what Korben and most retail service robots deploy. swanbase's pillar article on Physical AI answers the same question in its FAQ: a human form is justified only when the environment cannot be changed. To test a wheeled base on a small budget, a second-hand robot vacuum will do: see how to build your first robot from salvaged parts.
Where a startup fits without building the robot
🧩 Six layers, two of them already taken. Building the humanoid is the business of Wandercraft, Uma, Unitree, Figure and Tesla; the rest of the chain is open.
The value chain in six layers
- Hardware: motors, structure, batteries, hands. Capital-heavy, long cycles.
- Control: balance, walking, manipulation. The know-how Wandercraft carried over from exoskeletons.
- Models: perception, planning, world models. The territory of AMI Labs, NVIDIA Cosmos and LeRobot.
- Data: demonstrations, teleoperation, videos of real sites. The bottleneck, according to LeCun.
- Integration: adapting the robot to a site, a task, a safety standard. The weekly work seen in Douai.
- Operations: fleet, maintenance, supervision, hourly billing. Korben's business.
Taken spots, open spots
Layers 1 and 2 are held by well-funded players. Layer 3 belongs to research labs and tech giants, but its building blocks are open (V-JEPA 2, Cosmos, LeRobot), and our article on world models explains what a founder can get out of them. Layers 4, 5 and 6 are where a vertical startup wins: data from a specific sector (hospital pharmacy, cold-chain logistics, nuclear maintenance), integration for one type of site, or operating a multi-brand fleet. Korben built exactly that, with its own software and other brands' robots.
Start from a Unitree G1, like a lab
According to the Génération Robots blog, LORIA and LAAS-CNRS got their Unitree robots walking almost immediately via teleoperation and deployed walking policies trained in simulation. That is the path for a layer 4 or 5 startup: buy an entry-level robot, instrument a task, collect the data, sell the integration. The robot becomes a tool that serves your product. Onboard perception and balance fall under edge AI; planning falls under world models. If your startup is going after one of layers 4 to 6, apply to swanbase with the task and site you are targeting.
FAQ on French humanoid robots
What is the best-known humanoid robot?
NAO, designed by Aldebaran in Paris, has been the reference in education and research since 2006, with Pepper for reception roles. Its manufacturer has been in receivership since February 2025, with takeover bids filed in the spring.
Is there a home humanoid robot in France?
No French manufacturer sells a humanoid to consumers in 2026. Uma lists the home among its future targets, and Korben's Lucas Goumarre talks about selling to consumers "within 10 years."
How much does an entry-level humanoid robot cost?
The Unitree G1 is listed "from $13,500" on the manufacturer's website, excluding options and integration. French labs using it add weeks of engineering before it does anything beyond walking.
