Mengyou Intelligence Ropet Completes Series A Financing Exceeding $10 Million

A plush "pet", why did it become the first hit product of 2025

By Zhou Yizhi

At CES 2025, we saw new graphics cards, laptops, and televisions as usual, but compared to these conventional products, some unexpected things drew more interest.

Like a pet.

At CES 2025, a new gadget called Ropet drew everyone's attention.

Robot and Pet

The name gives it away; Ropet can be split into Robot and Pet, representing "robot" and "pet" respectively. Essentially, this is a robot pet.

Unlike the AI pets or companions we commonly see, Ropet ditched smooth or techy exteriors, opting instead for a cute design and plush surface material. Beneath this layer of fur, it is equipped with a complete heating system, maintaining an overall temperature of 37 degrees. When human fingers stroke them, one can feel the real touch and temperature of an animal.

Ropet's design reminds me of Baymax from "Big Hero 6". After the movie's release, its round, cute appearance and warm companionship function created a strong contrast with the cold robot image, attracting the love of many audiences.

However, to be popular like Baymax, appearance and temperature alone are not enough. If Ropet is not smart enough, you might just get a plush toy that triggers your "intolerance for stupidity".

To have rich interactions with humans, "eyes" and "ears" are essential organs, but the big eyes and fluff on Ropet are just camouflage. Its visual and auditory sensors are integrated into the nose. These two sensors are almost unnoticeable during daily use, preventing users from "breaking immersion" at a glance.

Besides vision and hearing, Ropet hides a responsive tactile system under its plush exterior. This sensor can feel human strokes or touches.

After the three sensors collect corresponding data, Ropet relies on AI to recognize human actions, language, and facial expressions, infers the corresponding emotional state, and finally reacts accordingly.

For example, it comforts users when they feel down, or shows companionship through body language. When it feels human strokes, it also simulates corresponding pet behaviors.

It is worth mentioning that Ropet's eyes are actually two large screens, capable of displaying Ropet's own emotional reactions to different human behaviors or emotions.

With cameras, sensors, AI, and eye screens, Ropet can achieve some interesting interactions.

For instance, it expresses hunger and makes stomach growling sounds. When humans place food in front of it like teasing a pet, it uses the camera and AI to remember the appearance of the food. When it sees the same food again, it displays the food icon on its eyes and makes chewing sounds.

Besides existing AI reactions, Ropet is equipped with an adaptive learning algorithm, possessing certain learning capabilities. It can record and analyze user habits and preferences, and continuously optimize its behavior patterns based on this information to provide more fitting emotional support.

If you do not have the patience to wait for it to learn slowly, you can also connect Ropet via a mobile app to participate in customizing interaction modes and behavior presets, catalyzing an AI pet unique to you in advance.

More interestingly, if Ropet stays connected to Wi-Fi, it can gain smarter "evolution" via ChatGPT. Having deeper and more meaningful conversations with you on certain topics is no problem.

Although with AI's help, Ropet has certain growth potential, this process is generally hidden in daily life, evolving subtly, requiring time to see changes. Therefore, to compensate for positive feedback, Ropet introduced another incentive mechanism.

Similar to the design of certain games, Ropet encourages users to interact with it. On one hand, this allows users to familiarize themselves with its functions faster; on the other hand, it accelerates Ropet's learning process.

After each interaction, Ropet gives users certain points, which can be used to redeem new accessories and software updates, keeping Ropet feeling noticeably fresh.

If AI's growth potential is a passive, subtle evolution process, then this incentive mechanism adds fun and interactivity to life through active participation, truly integrating Ropet into daily life as an interesting smart companion.

Ropet comes with various magnetic, interchangeable masks, and various detachable and washable fur colors. It weighs 600 grams in total, has a built-in 4400 mAh lithium battery, and uses a wireless base for charging. With a 30-minute charging time, the battery life can last up to 2 hours.

Ropet received great attention upon its debut at the CES 2025 conference. Its early bird starting price of $189 (base model) is also friendly enough.

As of press time, it has received support from over 800 people, raising over $230,000 in crowdfunding funds. It has officially entered the production process and will begin shipping in March 2025.

The Competition Point of AI Pets May Not Be AI

The concept of AI companions and AI pets is no longer new, but why was Ropet able to break through in this "commonplace" environment to gain attention and success?

To find the answer, we might need to extend the timeline and look back.

Before the big leap in AI technology, companion robot hardware had already appeared.

As early as 1999, Sony launched the world's first consumer-grade smart robot dog AIBO. Equipped with sensors like cameras, it could recognize the owner's voice and actions, exhibit behaviors similar to real pets, and make certain emotional interactions.

In 2017, on the eve of the big leap in AI technology, Jibo launched the world's first emotional social robot.

This robot already possessed primary AI functions, capable of voice interaction with users, providing functions like weather and reminders, and establishing emotional connections with users through expressions and actions.

Although Jibo's commercialization was not very successful, selling the related intellectual property to New York investment company SQN Venture Partners just one year later, it pointed out a direction for companion AI robots to some extent.

These two representative companion AI hardware products had a significant characteristic in form: they were very close to the traditional robot approach—distinct mechanical structures, smooth shells, with a strong sci-fi and industrial feel.

Another path in form started around the same time.

In 1998, Tiger Electronics, before being acquired by Hasbro, developed and produced an interactive plush toy called Furby.

Although Furby was more like a toy most of the time and couldn't be called a companion robot, it also had simple voice recognition and interaction functions. Relying on its plush exterior, Furby sold over 40 million units globally.

Following this existing successful path, in 2021, Casio jointly designed an AI pet named Moflin with Japanese startup Vanguard Industries and launched crowdfunding.

Besides AI functions, Moflin's biggest feature was its small size, covered in soft plush material, mostly gray-white or brown, feeling like a warm small animal to the touch.

Moflin was officially released in November 2024. After release, Moflin was once loved by young people and sold at high prices over 10,000 on second-hand websites.

These two paths of companion robot pets actually had similar technical levels at the same period. The biggest difference was simply the distinct form.

Closely related to form is the positioning of companion robots and human psychological cognition.

With the development of the internet, the network brought people closer together, but in reality, people began to become alienated. Families and individuals tended to become atomized, and loneliness became the main problem and emotion in life.

According to the report "Global, regional, and national temporal trend in burden of major depressive disorder from 1990 to 2019: An analysis of the global burden of disease study", in 2019, it was estimated that about 274.8 million people worldwide suffered from Major Depressive Disorder (MDD).

This data increased by 59% compared to 1990.

Statistical data from the US Gallup Panel verified the trend of depression prevalence.

Thus, companion AI pets, with providing emotional value as their biggest selling point, emerged, and demand increased accordingly.

But the problem is that the transmission of emotional value also varies in efficiency.

Just as we always dislike condescending preaching but can accept gentle and sincere language, the presentation of companion AI pets also needs to be particular.

Facing the issue of emotional transmission, psychology provides a set of effective therapy theories and methods.

Senses are the most direct and reliable channel for humans to interact with the outside world. Among them, touch and vision, as important components of the five senses, have been proven to be one of the effective treatment methods for regulating emotions through sensory regulation.

Meissner's and Pacinian corpuscles in the skin maintain high sensitivity to external contact, transmitting different signals to the brain based on the characteristics of contact.

According to tactile psychology theory, softness is one of the most loved elements by humans. This texture is usually associated with comfort, safety, and relaxation, prompting the brain to produce "happy hormone"—oxytocin, which can effectively reduce anxiety and stress, thereby achieving the effect of regulating emotions.

Our touch is very diverse and is one of the important ways to perceive the world.

More interestingly, senses do not operate independently; there is a cross-modal effect (Sensory Cross-modal Effect) between them.

This effect refers to one sensory stimulus linking the perception of other senses, like when seeing a sofa in a room, the brain naturally thinks it is soft.

This association further strengthens human cognition of "softness", bringing emotional comfort and a sense of safety.

There is also a cross-modal effect between smell and taste.

Speaking of this, we return to the question at the beginning of this section: Why was Ropet able to break through in this "commonplace" environment to gain attention and success?

At CES 2025, Ropet's Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder Jianbin He actually indirectly gave the answer:

We created a companion that combines technical complexity with genuine emotional connection.

If we explain this answer thoroughly, it is simply one sentence—they found a coupling agent called "softness" between cold machines and the sensitive inner world of humans.

This article comes from the WeChat Official Account "iFanr" (ID: ifanr), Author: Discovering Tomorrow's Products, published via 36Kr with authorization.

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