Playing robots into a “cultivation game”, manufacturers strive to become the “Bubble Mart” of the AI class

Wen| Play generation

How much is companionship worth? In the AI era, it may be US$150 billion, which is an estimate for the global AI companion market in 2030.

In the spring of 2025, when DEEPSEEK became popular, the pace of the times has also shifted to “AI Inclusive”: AI intelligent hardware has changed from efficiency tools costing hundreds of thousands of yuan to consumer electronics costing thousands to hundreds of yuan; from children’s education machines, story machines, and turned to selling emotional companionship to adults.

In the past year, global AI companion track financing has surged year-on-year, and many projects have received tens of millions of financing; this popularity continues to this day, and market players are coming in.

From Ropet, who can act coquettishly and ask for a hug, to Mirumi, who is shy like a baby, to Jennie, a bionic robot pet like a pet, and Fuzoo, which can go out with big eyes, new products like AI robots continue to accompany them.

Recently, entertainment consumer companies have also begun to retire, using IP+AI as the starting point. Pleasant Goat and Tom Cat have launched AI companion toys, which are targeted at adults and are priced at around 500- 1,500 yuan.

The entire market has rich and diverse products and prices. First, Japan’s LOVOT, which is priced at tens of thousands of yuan, Casio’s Moflin and Panasonic’s NICOBO entered the 3000 yuan price band; later, domestic manufacturer CUPBOO launched a similar AI pet product with a price of 1399 yuan.

This is not counting the price limits of domestic manufacturers. A universal AI module is as low as 10 yuan. There is a crazy cactus equipped with AI hearts, the price has doubled, and online e-commerce sales have hundreds.

Products tend to be people-friendly, cute, fashionable, interesting, and trendy, and the market is vying for an AI bubble Mart.

The best life for a spoiled robot

Accompanying robots is an emerging industry. For a long time, most companies have still used a simple AI model + hardware combination, resulting in most products becoming low-level toys that can talk to each other.

At this stage, the direction of product evolution is to eliminate the man-machine flavor.

Ropet was born out of the desktop pet settings. It has a round and lovely shape and fluffy appearance, which visually gives people a desire to touch it. When you stroke them with your fingers, you can feel a body temperature of 37 degrees, as if it’s a real animal touch.

Ropet’s nose is a camera that can identify environmental information; his eyes are electronic displays to express emotions. He was able to identify the owner and showed professionalism. This recognition is not just about memory, but also the analysis of expressions. For example, when the expression recognizes that the owner is in a good mood, it will show love in its eyes to respond emotionally.

Its developer “Mengyou Intelligent” went deep into the user market and found that a large number of AI consumer electronics have developed chat conversation functions based on language models, but chatting and companionship are not equal. For female users, being paid attention, being cared for, being touched, etc. is often the source of companionship satisfaction rather than multiple rounds of conversations.

As robots learn to ask for hugs and kisses, technology-based products become more attractive and attract money.

Mengyou Intelligent gave a concrete user portrait: They are young women between the ages of 25 and 30 who will put plush dolls, hand pieces, plants and fragrances on their desks. They are JELLYCAT or Bubble Mart customers, they are heavy users of Xiaohongbook……

Ropet crowdfunded 5 million yuan in three months, and the first batch of products were priced at US$189 on overseas crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, equivalent to about RMB 1400.

Coincidentally, Fuzzoo launched by “Lobo Intelligence” also follows the cute pet route. Fuzzoo is like a colorful hairball with big Kazilan eyes (electronic screen). In the official setting, it can accompany its owner to chase after tourists and check in shopping. However, Fuzzoo has added NFC functionality, which allows you to pair up and make friends by touching other pets, adding social attributes.

The product has not yet been officially released, but it has attracted the attention of a wave of Gen Z women and secondary groups in its early testing stages. These players are attracted by the cute appearance and gameplay, and they are also fans of nurturing games such as Toma Gezi. (Toma Koko: The digital pet game console launched by Bandai Toys Company in Japan in 1996 has a shape similar to an egg. It has three buttons to control feeding, bathing, sleeping and other cultivation methods. It was widely popular in China in the 1990s)

Luo Bo’s intelligent team studied the popular game “Love and Deep Space” and found that B Games can deeply grasp the emotional needs of female players and create a very delicate emotional interaction experience, thus achieving success. Inspired by this, the team did a lot of homework from the perspective of user emotional experience to allow the agent to find unique value in the rhythm of modern young women’s lives.

Compared with the domestic market, the Japanese market has verified in the past 20 years that robots are precious only if they are born by their mothers.

The AIBO robot dog launched by Sony in 1999 is regarded as a epoch-making product. It can sense and recognize sounds and gestures through camera + sensor, wagging its tail, chasing the ball, etc. like a pet dog, attracting a group of diehard fans.

Japan’s silver-haired people take AIBO to the heart of their hearts: they dress him in beautiful clothes, put him in a stroller and put him on the street to walk the dog, hold regular dog parties, and even have special funerals and transcendent ceremonies. For a time, robots are family members and pets have become a new trend of thought in society.

Another well-known one is LOVOT launched by Japanese robot company GROOVE X, which has shipped more than 10,000 units since 2019. The brand vigorously renders the settings of family members and creates a sense of parent + child + robot atmosphere in the advertisement, which implies that LOVOT is not only a family partner, but also needs to be integrated into life, and dressing is one of them.

In June 2023, Japan’s GROOVE X family companion robot LOVOT entered the the mainland of China market

However, LOVOT’s purchase and installation fees are expensive, and the unit price of a coat ranges from hundreds to thousands of yuan. The brand also often launches co-branding with the clothing fashion brand to renovate the patterns every season.

However, when people spend money on robots, they buy not only pleasing to the eye, but also emotional satisfaction: as long as LOVOT is changed, it will be very happy. Because these clothes have built-in chips, LOVOT can sense the dressing experience from them. This also forces consumers to continue to pay.

AI robots have been played into a “cultivation game” to enrich gameplay and set up reward mechanisms to continuously hook users and expand derivative consumption, including maintenance, dressing, accessories, service support, etc. As time goes on and the emotional premium goes on, the willingness to krypton increases. The entire breeding process is more like a stable krypton-gold game, opening up new business ideas.

The track is hot

The productivity of robots in terms of emotional value has not yet been fully explored. In the past, robots were often linked to efficiency tools in the B-end market. Nowadays, with AI support, robots have brain and emotional abilities. It also gives complex hardware the opportunity to experience upgrades and find new space in the C-end consumer electronics market.

Compared with the past, product design has undergone major changes: the appearance is more fashionable and interesting, the product positioning is more segmented, and the scenes are more focused. Product design abandons complete functions and focuses on deep emotional interactions, allowing robots to be humane and maintain long-term emotions; using emotional premiums to stimulate consumption potential and seek differentiated advantages.

To create the younger generation of “new home appliances”, companion AI products are ushering in a round of market blowout, and venture capital is active.

Mengyou Intelligent, the developer of the popular product Ropet, was founded in 2022. It was co-founded by Zhenzhi Venture Capital and invested US$3 million. At the end of 2024, the company completed a new round of multimillion-dollar financing, and Zhenzhi Venture Capital will continue to follow suit.

Sun Zhaozhi, former head of Xiaopeng robot product design, established Luobo Intelligent in January 2024. Its first product is positioned as AI trendy toys. The design and development of a three-wheel prototype has been completed and is expected to be released in May this year. Guo Zhi, former general manager of Microsoft DPS’s global solution innovation department, founded Yijia Yiban and launched the AI plush toy Aixiaoban. A large wave of new products is still on the way.

In addition, Aofei Entertainment’s trendy entertainment brands have unlimited entertainment points, and listed companies such as Tom Cat, Shifeng Culture, Shanghai Film, Xinghui Entertainment, and Gaole Shares have already had relevant layouts.

However, the market has a broad definition and positioning of AI companion products: AI pets, AI toys, AI robots, AI trendy toys, etc. Different team backgrounds, different perspectives, and different problem-solving ideas.

Most teams with a scientific and technological background value exclusive technical barriers, often adopting self-developed models and focusing on independent technical architecture capabilities; product positioning is biased towards weak companionship, weak functions, and not excessive interruption; focusing on voice, vision and touch, optimizing emotional value Transfer efficiency, using product design and complex technical implementation to support emotional value.

Some manufacturers have also made AI companion robots smaller, more decorative and interesting. Japanese startup Yukai Engineering encourages people to carry AI robots with them.

The Mirumi developed by the company is more like a bag that can be hung on a backpack. The product has built-in distance sensors and inertial measurement units that can scan the surrounding environment and detect motion. However, Mirumi couldn’t do more than turn her head. Another Nkojita FuFu is a silicone robot shaped like a kitten. Its only function is to help you cool hot drinks (combined with a fan and special algorithm).

These two “beautiful wastes” have no functionality to speak of, but they can still be sold for about 515 yuan and 185 yuan.

IP entertainment consumer companies are starting from IP+AI, trying new product forms based on IP influence, or using technology premiums to create IP value possibilities.

At present, Aofei Entertainment’s AI toy project has been placed under the company’s trendy toy brand Playpoint Unlimited. The original Pleasant Goat AI toy products rely on the animated world view and integrate the three elements of rubber plush, IP, and AI. However, this product is still in the early testing stage, and will optimize iterations based on market feedback in the future to improve emotional value attributes. The possibility of launching original AI toy characters is not ruled out.

However, in the children’s market, there are not many smart devices with IP elements. The market more defines it as early education, story machines, and dialogue toys. For example, Pleasant Goat has been born for 20 years, and its audience covers a wide age group. How to re-establish emotional connection with adults and open up differentiated positioning is the key.

Judging from the current market, the AI content is not necessarily high, the technical barriers are not large, and a large number of manufacturers are pouring in. One view is that differentiated competition will return to IP in the future, which will help quickly scale up; IP+AI is a new opportunity, and the early market needs to seize the lead.

Yin Le, partner of Zhenge Fund, pointed out: The market is in the early stage of product definition, and creativity accounts for a large part. In the long run, the more important thing about this track is how to attract the vast majority of users, form a strong stickiness with users, and carry out some innovations on this basis.

At present, AI toys are regarded as one of the best implementation scenarios for current large models on the hardware side, and the market is generally optimistic.

Boston Consulting predicts that the global companion robot market will reach US$150 billion in 2030, with China accounting for more than 40%.

Specific to AI toys, the global market is expected to grow from approximately US$8.7 billion in 2022 to US$35.11 billion in 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of more than 16%. Founder Securities estimates that assuming that the domestic AI toy penetration rate reaches 20% to 25% in 2028, the AI toy market size is expected to reach 30 billion to 40 billion yuan.

Some manufacturers are cutting into the trend of AI and provide AI development and upgrade solutions for IP toys. Haivivi has launched a pendant, BubblePal, which can easily activate the toy by hanging the pendant on the toy. In less than a month since BubblePal went on sale, more than 10,000 devices have been activated. If the price is 399 yuan per piece, the GMV will exceed 4 million yuan. Sales of 80,000 units are expected this year.

Another toy company, FoloToy, developed a large AI dialogue box Magicbox. This AI movement sells for only 10 yuan and can be installed on any toy. In November 2024, it was reported that Magicbox’s cumulative shipments on the C-terminal reached 20,000 units; its revenue in 2025 is expected to reach 50 million.

Not full commercialization

However, a good prospect for the cake does not mean that everyone can eat enough.

In 2024, Embodied, the developer of the American AI robot Moxie, closed due to failed financing. From the official release of Moxie in 2020 to the termination of operations, it quickly fell.

Jibo, which was interviewed in 2017, was once named the best invention of the year by Time magazine, but its commercialization was not smooth. Just one year after its listing, the company suffered layoffs and sold assets, shutting down its servers in 2019.

AI companion products still require long-term cost investment such as research and development, after-sales maintenance, and customer support. At present, many projects still rely on blood transfusion of funds. Sony’s AIBO robot dog was affected by the company’s operating decline in 2006 and was suspended as an exploratory project (as a technology exploration business, AIBO was later restarted in 2018).

In the final analysis, the user group is small, the scale is insufficient, and the investment is high and the output is low. In the face of the spiritual blueprint of emotional value, AI companion products still face the problem of food and clothing in the business model. Especially in terms of cost, the long-term expenditure of calling large models cannot be avoided.

Some industry insiders pointed out that for an AI companion toy with a retail price of 1,000 yuan, the overall cost, including model calls, is controlled below 50%. According to other data, the cost of AI toys is mainly software costs, and hardware profits are 60% or even 90%. If there is a screen cost, it may cost tens of yuan more. However, with the price war among large model manufacturers, there is still room for price cuts in AI toys in the future.

Fuzzoo, an AI pet that plans to launch overseas crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, in May, priced at less than $100. Play Generation learned that charging items such as subscription services and peripheral derivatives have not yet been determined.

The price of this type of product has been further tested, and the market has rolled out before it becomes strong.

At present, the more mainstream payment method in the market is subscription. In China, the price of a LOVOT is around 30,000 yuan, with an additional 880 yuan per month for software services and maintenance insurance; or it can be bought out directly, which is around 60,000 yuan. Domestic FoloToy and Yueran Innovation also implement subscription fees of 99 yuan a year.

This subscription model brings relatively stable cash flow and user stickiness to the brand, but it also challenges the traditional concept of consumption: whether the public is willing to continue to pay like they buy video members.

Currently, no manufacturer has announced the proportion of subscribers. It has been observed that there are also players who have been more than two months old and have not continued to use it due to frequent business trips and other time reasons.

At present, many AI toy projects start in the North American market (mainly concentrated in English-speaking countries), and these markets have higher acceptance of AI products.

The domestic AI companionship market has not really begun. For example, Japan’s LOVOT, whose retail price reaches 10,000 yuan, is more regarded as a toy for the rich.

By the end of 2024, the number of people living alone in China will reach 302 million. As early as 2021, empty-nest youth were widely discussed; a survey in the same year showed that more than 52% of empty-nest youth were feeding or planned to feed pets in the future.

Modern living patterns and realistic pressures are also depriving young people of their social strength. People have to devote more time and energy to work and ignore real social participation.

Whether it is various chat tools for virtual characters such as Character AI and Talkie AI that became popular last year, or the female game that sells emotional support in the game experience, or the current commercial hotspots of toy brands such as JELLYCAT that create personal blessings, they are almost inseparable from emotional value.

For AI to accompany the market, it is difficult to say when the real era will come. But there is no doubt that one business opportunity after another is spawned around emotional value.

Data source Data source Ark Invest, information: First Finance and Economics, Securities Times, Rule of Law Daily, China Youth Daily, etc.