Faraday Future (FFAI), owned by Jia Yueting, has released the mini humanoid robot FF Nova, with the robot body priced at $2,490 (approximately 16,600 yuan), and a companion developer skills package priced at $390. According to the company, FF Nova is the first entry-level embodied AI humanoid robot in the US priced below $2,500, positioned as a backpack-portable Physical AI experimental platform.
FF Nova targets developers, geeks, Physical AI content creators, as well as universities, research labs, and educational institutions. The robot is equipped with lidar, wide-angle vision, depth perception, and a circular microphone array, has 20 degrees of freedom across its body, supports bipedal walking, turning, waving, and autonomously standing up after falling, and offers two mobility modes: bipedal walking and autonomous navigation via a detachable chassis. It connects to a large voice model, supporting natural conversation, voiceprint recognition, and AI Agent integration, aiming to serve as the physical-world execution vehicle for cloud-based intelligent agents.
On the development ecosystem side, FF Nova offers an open SDK, supports the ROS2 development workflow and OTA updates, and plans to build a Sim2Real reinforcement learning pipeline, along with a Skills Store and developer community supporting distribution, reuse, and commercialization of development results.
Currently, FF Nova has opened online applications and invitation-based limited sales, with the first batch targeting universities, research labs, educational institutions, and independent developers. The product is planned for release in three phases: Phase 1 features a limited sale of 100 units, with the first 20 units delivered immediately; Phase 2 expands to all developers and educational institutions; Phase 3 launches a full consumer version. FF Nova enters the embodied AI market at a relatively low price, but its future competitiveness will still depend on actual locomotion capabilities, the maturity of its development ecosystem, and its performance in scaled delivery.