You Can Add ‘Lamp That Folds Your Laundry’ to the List of Doomed Startups

Man, folding shirts sucks, right? What’s up with the, uh… little hand movements and… um… heavy pieces of cotton. Given the Herculean effort it takes to fold a shirt, many of us have probably thought, “Boy, I wish my lamp could do that,” which is why a company called Sincere turns that totally common desire into a purchasable product.

While Sincere has been around for a while, the company recently released a new video of a home robot called Lume, which as I just mentioned, is a lamp designed to do things, including folding your shirts, making your bed, and (everyone’s favorite) rotating around your hand while drawing like the Pixar lamp, if it takes too much Adderall.

What’s notable about Sincere’s recent video is that it doesn’t appear to be AI-generated, although I’ve contacted the company’s CEO Aaron Tan for more information about its authenticity. Personally, if I used AI to make a video of my expensive robot lamp working, I would probably make it less weak, but maybe it would Very To reassure or something? As Fast Company noted in a previous demo last summer, Were Presented, and they look Very Different from what was just released—for one, much more obviously AI-generated.

Adding to the realness meter is the fact that Sincere is apparently getting ready to do an IRL demo of the Lume in Palo Alto, California, which, if I’m honest, is exactly where you’d expect to see that kind of thing. And though you might look at something like this and think (reasonably), “There’s no way this could be shipped,” Sincere would like us to think otherwise on that front. According to the company, shipping of the Lume is expected to begin in at least eight weeks. Now, whether anyone is willing to buy a $1,500 lamp that can do some work for you is another question entirely, but I won’t pretend to know what the point of robotic lamp money is. Very nice, I agree.

I obviously haven’t seen Lume for myself, but if it’s anything like other robots from companies with far greater resources than Sincere, I wouldn’t get my hopes up. I saw LG’s laundry-folding robot, CLOID, at CES 2026, and it was a little painful to watch the world’s bleeding-edge technology awkwardly fold some washcloths. I get it – robotics is a complex field, and every groundbreaking new technology needs to start somewhere, but oh my god, how many millions of dollars do we need to spend making dirty clothes for ourselves? Apparently a lot!

I’m open to being proven wrong, but for now, I’m assuming this is just another expensive way to accidentally entertain your cats when you’re not home.