Animotion Robotics Unveils Éloi Bionic Robot

Animotion Robotics has disclosed the first details of Éloi, its debut bionic robot, announced in a press release. The San Francisco company describes Éloi as an Embodied AI Presence rather than a task focused hardware product.

Éloi uses an AI core inside a realistic exterior and is designed to develop interaction history with a human companion. It can pause, stay silent, or choose not to respond, and its behavior is shaped by ongoing interactions.

The robot is currently in a digital phase called Dream State on its official website, where users can start building shared memories. Animotion Robotics says those memories will later be stored on a portable chip that can be inserted into the physical robot.

Éloi includes systems for breathing like rhythms, gaze shifts, small autonomous movements, and responses based on internal states. It has 42 degrees of freedom across its body, including 39 in the face and a 12 DoF mouth module for multilingual lip syncing.

Animotion Robotics was founded in San Francisco in 2025 by Shane Zhu, a former robotics engineer at Walt Disney Imagineering. The company completed its initial institutional funding round in early 2026.