Genesis AI unveils Eno, a wheeled general purpose robot

Published: 2026-06-18T08:27:31.000Z

The robotics field has been gripped by a race to build the most human looking machine, and Genesis AI has decided to run the opposite way. The French company, backed by Eric Schmidt, has unveiled Eno, a general purpose robot that rolls on wheels rather than legs, betting that useful robots should look like tools, not people.

The robotics field has been gripped by a kind of arms race to build the most convincingly human looking machine, and Genesis AI has just decided to run in the opposite direction. The French robotics company, backed by former Google chief Eric Schmidt, has unveiled its first general purpose robot, called Eno, and the most striking thing about it is what it deliberately is not. Rather than legs and a humanoid silhouette, Eno rolls on a wheeled base, with a foldable tower of articulated panels that can adjust its height and reach, and a pair of dexterous hands doing the actual work. The bet is that the future of useful robots looks less like us and more like a well engineered tool that simply gets the job done. The reasoning behind that design choice is more practical than ideological. Genesis AI argues that most industrial customers operate on flat floors, so wheels are faster, more stable and more energy efficient than legs, which only really earn their keep when a robot needs to climb stairs. By stripping away the human mimicry, the company can pour its engineering into the parts that matter most, particularly the hands. Eno's proprietary robotic hands are built to match the form and function of human hands, which lets it use the tools, handles, buttons and objects already designed for people. As several observers have noted, a robot that can roll into a room is useless if it cannot grab, twist, lift and sort with precision, so the hands may ultimately decide whether the whole approach works. The brain is where the real story sits. Eno is powered by GENE, Genesis AI's robotics foundation model, which the company describes as its most advanced robotic intelligence and positions as the thing that turns the machine into a true physical agent. Instead of looping through pre programmed motions like a traditional factory robot, Eno is meant to understand a high level goal, retain memory, adapt when conditions change, and plan multi step tasks over extended periods. The company has shown the system handling complex manipulation, from lab pipetting and multi object grasping to solving a Rubik's Cube. There is also a transparency feature, an optional screen that displays what the robot is thinking and doing in real time, intended to build trust among the people working alongside it. The commercial plan is concrete and near term. Genesis AI has already built dozens of units and plans to scale production in the second half of 2026, with targeted deployments before year end starting in manufacturing, logistics and laboratories, followed by hospitality and healthcare, and eventually homes. The company has signed a deployment partnership with LG CNS and raised a $105 million seed round, one of the largest ever for a French startup, from backers including Eclipse, Khosla Ventures, Bpifrance, Eric Schmidt and Xavier Niel. The regional read is increasingly relevant. Across the Gulf, robotics and physical AI have become priority investment areas, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE funding automation for warehouses, hospitals and mega projects under their diversification agendas. A general purpose robot built for flat industrial floors and human designed tools fits neatly into the logistics heavy, construction intensive environments the region is building at scale, making companies like Genesis AI natural candidates for eventual Gulf deployment.