Meta partnered with Chinese robotics company Fourier to build a humanoid robot prototype, codenamed Max, in three months, the Information reported1. Meta is already working on a second-generation unit, Max2, with research and development officially beginning in September2. Meta has said it has no plans to sell the robots.
The Max prototype stands approximately 1.5 meters tall and weighs about 48 kilograms. It runs on Nvidia's Jetson Thor chip and features a facial screen capable of simulating human expressions, a speaker, and a five-fingered robotic hand. The unit can recognize sound from 5 meters away and understand gestures from 3 meters away.
Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth previously described the humanoid robot internally as the physical form of the company's consumer AI agent product, Muse. Li-Chen Miller, Meta's Vice President of Product for Robotics, spent nearly two months stationed at a Shanghai factory to advance the project during the R&D period.
The planned Max2 upgrade will include improvements to the torso and robotic hand, along with the addition of a projector and stair sensors.
ANALYSIS The project positions Meta to extend its AI software stack into a physical form factor, bridging its consumer AI agent work with embodied hardware rather than treating robotics as a standalone product line. The explicit decision not to sell the units keeps the effort internal, consistent with a research-and-platform orientation rather than a hardware revenue play.
Meta's move into humanoid robotics comes as Tesla has cleared its Fremont factory floor of Model S and Model X production to make room for Optimus humanoid-robot manufacturing equipment[2]. S&P Global Ratings recently cut Meta's credit rating, part of a broader repricing of AI infrastructure spending assumptions across capital markets[1].