Around 100 of Diligent Robotics' one-armed white robots are currently rolling through US hospital corridors, fetching medication and lab samples. Not one of those hospitals owns the robot that is doing the work.
Moxi, as the robot is known, is only available on a rental or subscription basis. No hospital writes a check for the hardware and walks away with it. That single decision by its maker, Texas-based Diligent Robotics, says a lot about where robotics as a whole is heading, from wheeled delivery bots to the first wave of humanoid machines now being offered the same way.
Why Moxi Is Rented, Never Sold
Moxi shuttles medical supplies around hospitals, and staff have grown attached to it. Nurses greet it with a good morning, a high five, or a hug, and the robot answers with heart-shaped LED eyes and a beep. Todd Brugger, chief operating officer at Diligent Robotics, says the reaction goes both ways: clinical staff describe Moxi as part of the team.
But affection is not why hospitals subscribe rather than buy. Brugger points to two practical reasons. It lowers the upfront cost for a hospital that would otherwise need to fund a full purchase, and it keeps the hardware current. As he puts it, the underlying technology is evolving fast, so the company keeps updating the robot's software and capabilities on an ongoing basis. A hospital that bought Moxi outright in 2023 would be running the same brain today as one that just signed up. Under the subscription, both get whatever version Diligent is currently shipping.
The Business Model Behind the Robot: RaaS
Robotics companies have a name for this: robotics-as-a-service. The robot itself is only part of the deal. Service, maintenance, and upgrades are bundled in, and in some setups a remote human engineer can take control if the robot gets stuck. Rental terms now stretch from a single day to multiple years, covering everything from Moxi's hospital runs to bartending robots and autonomous weeders on farms.
Chicago-based Formic runs the same model at industrial scale, operating a fleet of more than 250 robots on a robotics-as-a-service basis. Shawn Fitzgerald, the company's chief revenue officer, sums up the pitch simply: if a robot arm burns out, that is on Formic, not the customer. He argues this flat monthly model levels the playing field for smaller manufacturers who could never justify buying factory robots outright. Formic is also currently testing humanoid robots for industrial roles, which suggests the same rental logic is about to extend upward into a much more expensive category of hardware.
Humanoid Robots Are Following the Same Script
Humanoids are newer to this rental world, and their current jobs reflect that. Most are rented for clearly defined, low-risk tasks, which today usually means entertainment: dancing, singing, or working a wedding or corporate event. Ethan Qi, an associate director at Counterpoint Research in Beijing, explains that a humanoid dance routine is easier to fake than it looks. A real dancer performs the routine on video, the footage trains the robot, and an engineer typically still travels with the machine in case the venue trips it up.
California-based 1X is testing whether that rental logic extends into the home. The company plans to start shipping its NEO home robot later this year. NEO is priced at $20,000 outright, or $499 a month on subscription for early access customers in the US. Dar Sleeper, the company's vice president of product and design, expects most buyers will still purchase outright, but says the subscription option meaningfully lowers the barrier for everyone else.
Chinese firms are further along in testing humanoid rentals commercially. Shanghai's Agibot, one of the country's biggest humanoid makers, now rents its robots in 17 countries, including the UK, often through local partner businesses. Some Chinese firms lease humanoids to hotels or list them on cleaning-service apps, which doubles as a training ground for future home use. Analyst Wang expects outright purchases to still dominate within China itself, partly because state-owned companies and government subsidies are driving a large share of domestic humanoid orders.
Why Rent a Robot That's Still Learning
Three forces are pushing rentals ahead of ownership right now. The first is speed of change. Qi notes that robotics companies release a new hardware iteration almost every year, and owning a robot means you are stuck with it, while renting means you can always move to whatever is newest. The second is expertise. Renting removes the need to understand the underlying code, since technical problems become the manufacturer's problem, not the customer's. The third is unfinished technology. Interact Analysis' Wang is blunt about where humanoids stand today: the technology is still immature.
That immaturity cuts both ways. For manufacturers, a rental deal is not just revenue. It is a way to place unfinished hardware into real-world settings and collect the operating data needed to actually finish it. Every hospital corridor Moxi navigates, every event a humanoid dances at, is effectively a paid pilot program for the company that built it.
My Take
Strip away the heart-eyed LED faces and the wedding dance routines, and this is a straightforward equipment-finance story. Nobody rents a forklift because they love forklifts. They rent because the forklift they'd need in three years doesn't exist yet, and the one they'd buy today would be a worse version of it.
The interesting number in all of this is not $499 a month for NEO. It's that Formic is testing humanoids on the exact same billing model it already uses for industrial arms that have existed for decades. That is the tell. The rental model isn't being built around humanoids specifically. Humanoids are just the newest, most expensive thing being slotted into a payment structure that already existed for far more boring machines.
Hospitals subscribing to Moxi rather than buying it is not really a story about robots being loved by nurses, charming as that is. It's a story about who absorbs the risk when the hardware underneath a piece of critical infrastructure is still changing every twelve months. Right now, that answer is the manufacturer, not the hospital. That will not stay true forever.
- Diligent Robotics only offers Moxi on a rental or subscription basis, not outright purchase, and around 100 units are active in US hospitals.
- Robotics-as-a-service bundles the robot with maintenance, software upgrades, and sometimes remote human support into one recurring fee.
- 1X's NEO home robot costs $20,000 outright or $499 a month, with shipping planned for later this year but not yet confirmed.
- Formic runs 250-plus industrial robots on a service model and is now testing humanoids the same way, alongside Agibot's humanoid rentals across 17 countries.
- Renting protects buyers from fast hardware turnover and removes the need for in-house technical expertise, while giving manufacturers real-world data on still-immature machines.
FAQ
Can a hospital buy a Moxi robot outright?
No. Diligent Robotics offers Moxi only on a rental or subscription basis, which includes service, maintenance, and ongoing software upgrades.
What is robotics-as-a-service (RaaS)?
It's a rental model where a company pays a recurring fee for a robot instead of buying it, with maintenance, upgrades, and sometimes remote human support bundled into the price.
How much does 1X's NEO home robot cost?
$20,000 to buy outright, or $499 a month for early access US customers on a subscription. 1X has said it plans to start shipping NEO later this year, though no confirmed ship date has been given.
Why are humanoid robots often rented instead of bought?
The hardware is improving quickly, the technology is still considered immature, and renting removes the need for in-house technical expertise to operate or repair the robot.
Is it cheaper to rent or buy a robot long-term?
It depends on usage. Manufacturers argue renting avoids a large upfront cost and keeps hardware current, but a company running a robot constantly for years may still find outright ownership cheaper over time.
Conclusion
None of this is settled yet, and that is the honest caveat worth ending on. Diligent's own hospitals seem happy renting Moxi, Formic's factory customers are happy renting arms, and 1X is betting some slice of homeowners will be happy renting NEO. But analyst Marco Wang expects China's own humanoid market to tilt back toward outright ownership, driven by state-backed orders rather than consumer subscriptions. The rental model is winning the current moment because the hardware is unfinished and the pace of change is fast. Neither of those conditions is guaranteed to last, and when they change, so might the answer to who owns the robot in the room.
Source: BBC. Related reading on revolutioninai.com: UBTECH's U1 Robot Was Announced at $30,000. It Shipped for $16,700, and 7 of the Most Realistic Chinese Humanoid Robots Right Now.
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