Reported by NUPIAO |
2025marks what everyone’s calling the “breakout year” for AI hardware. In just six months, over 50 startups flooded into the AI companion space. Hot money is pouring in, and venture capital excitement keeps spiking across every CES booth.
But flip six months forward, and things get brutal beneath the surface. The industry’s knockout round has officially begun.
“Too many newcomers are rushing in with quick-and-dirty tactics. High return rates, rock-bottom sales—it’s a guaranteed money pit. A whole wave of players is getting washed out soon.”That’s the reality check from Fuzozo founder Sun Zhaozhi, in his exclusive chat with NUPIAO.
Right when others are scrambling to survive the shakeout, Shanghai-based Robopoet—just two years old—is smashing expectations. Its AI companion, Fuzozo, just posted killer 618 numbers: May e-commerce GMV broke past 20 million RMB, moving over 40,000 units. Year-over-year? Up 18 times. It’s sitting pretty at #1 on Tmall’s AI toy charts.
Since going live last July, Fuzozo has shipped nearly 300,000 units. That puts it in a tiny club of AI hardware actually scaling in the real world.
And while dominating domestic shelves, Fuzozo’s made serious moves overseas. Japan was the first stop.
Going Global in Japan, “Phenomenal” Crowdfunding Blast
On May 29, Fuzozo launched on Japan’s crowdfunding platform Makuake. Within eight hours, it already racked up 20 million yen. Sun calls it a “phenomenal” moment for AI hardware crowdfunding in Japan.
Japan’s market isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s mature, packed with homegrown IP, and fiercely competitive. You’ve got pioneers like Tamagotchi, high-end bots like LOVOT… the bar is set sky-high.
But last year, when Sun took a Fuzozo prototype to pitch local partners, he noticed something telling. Their own prototypes were sluggish on LLM integration, lagged behind Fuzozo in polish, cost way more to build, and sat at tens of thousands of yen.
Thanks to China’s leap in AI LLM tech and our unmatched supply chain, Sun sees it differently: “Taking Fuzozo to Japan felt like entering a massive market with almost zero competition.” At ¥19,800, the price gap isn’t just a lead—it’s a cliff.”
Back in 2025, Sun—who previously shaped interiors at Xpeng Motors and led robot product development at the company—brought an “embodied AI” mindset to this space. He bet early on a tightly integrated hardware-software form factor ready for actual mass production.
Visually, Fuzozo is a plush orb charm. Round head, blinking eyes, and if you stroke its forehead or chin, it gives you that instant cute feedback. But honestly, the real magic is in how fluidly it handles emotional dialogue.
After securing backing from Zhu Xiaohu (GGV Capital) and Sequoia China, Fuzozo fast-tracked manufacturing. They even partnered with Huawei to drop a custom “Hanhan” edition, hitting the mainstream market at just 399 RMB.
Sun’s watched the room closely: “The weird thing about this track is that once folks see the explosive demand, they think, ‘Hardware? Easy.’ So they rush in. What they miss is that the real moat isn’t the casing or chips—it’s the software and product innovation.”
Today, AI toy returns hover around 40%. People buy one, lose the novelty after a week, and toss it in a drawer. Meanwhile, the flood of cheap, plush-covered chatterbots flooding Huaqiangbei are getting phased out fast.
Robopoet’s counterplay? Build the brand and own IP from day one. No OEM, no white-label shenanigans. They crafted a “Fluffy Planet” lore system where five color variants map to Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water, each with distinct personalities. The more you interact, the more Fuzozo builds unique memories and preferences. It’s all about refining that loop—from worldbuilding and long-term recall to cognitive pacing and conversational rhythm.
Most AI companions right now suffer from monologue syndrome. They dump a paragraph of summary, then awkwardly throw a question at you. It’s an industry-wide glitch. Honestly, no AI toy has nailed high-frequency, bite-sized exchanges using everyday words like “yeah” or “nope” yet.
Under the hood, Robopoet is laser-focused on cracking “long-term memory“. “The challenge isn’t storage,” Sun explains. “It’s retrieval speed and accuracy. Can it pull up the right context instantly?”
Above the base LLM, the team built priority routing, cognitive reflection loops, and scene pre-loading systems — these are infinitely more complex than slapping a generic model onto a gadget. And that complexity is exactly the barrier to entry.
Localizing for Japan wasn’t just translation work; it took serious time. The team fine-tuned speech levels—casual vs. polite handled perfectly. Polyphones? Sorted. Even the elemental personalities got tweaked. They brought in internal experts from top Japanese firms to co-create IP, dialing up that manga-esque, delightfully nerdy charm to match local tastes.
During beta testing, some user messages hit hard. One 55-year-old mom wrote: “My kids grew up and moved away. Haven’t seen them in five years, never even met my grandkids. Can’t keep pets anymore now, so I’m just counting down the days until Fuzozo arrives.” Another couple shared how losing their dog of 15 years left a quiet ache—they just needed a gentle presence to talk to.
Sun noticed Japanese users span a much wider age range—and that’s precisely who AI companions are meant to reach.
If Japan’s the beachhead, then the U.S.—with its sheer purchasing power—is the next must-take territory for Fuzozo.
For the U.S., the playbook shifts. Fuzozo isn’t positioning itself as a “toy.” They’re treating it like a personal robot: ship the product in, observe real users, figure out actual needs, then iterate. The U.S. market is wildly fragmented. After two trips to CES, any initial nerves Sun had quickly melted away.
Some Chinese brands used to hide their roots abroad, just pushing volume.“We’ve been upfront since day one: we’re a Chinese brand, and our products carry strong Asian cultural DNA. So how do we handle pushback? Nail localization. Show the market we respect their culture.” Sun believes leaning into that authenticity is exactly where today’s cross-border opportunities lie.
The Real Moat Lies in the “Soul”
“Conversation is the tool, not the end goal.” That might be the most counterintuitive line in Fuzozo’s product philosophy.
Sun breaks it down for NUPIAO: chat serves two jobs—nurturing and socializing. He sees a major blind spot in the industry: mistaking “can it talk?” for actual product value. With Fuzozo, dialogue is just the bridge to build emotional attachment, foster that raising-a-pet feeling, and create a sense of belonging.
Right now, Fuzozo is only showing off less than 50% of its core nurturing and social features. More drops are coming to boost long-term stickiness. They don’t publish retention stats publicly, but Sun hints that hardcore users are clocking 5 to 6 hours of daily chat.
Recently, a video went viral of a little girl sobbing because her long-time AI bot got smashed. At its final moments, the bot taught her the word memory. Zhu Xiaohu actually forwarded that clip straight to Sun.
With all the hype around “human-AI relationships” lately, Sun’s stance is clear: making friends with AI is already happening. It’s just a matter of adoption speed. But let’s be real—AI can’t replace genuine human bonds.
Real relationships run on “negative feedback”—mess up, and people step back. AI doesn’t work that way. Without proper guardrails, users could easily get trapped in an “emotional cocoon”—and that’s exactly what Sun’s most careful about preventing.
That’s why Fuzozo baked in social mechanics, like offline touch-to-meet features.“One mom told me her kid made tons of new friends at school after bonding with Fuzozo. That’s the payoff. The deeper the bond with Fuzozo gets, the more we need to guide kids out of that AI ‘emotional cocoon’ and back into real-world connections.”
Asked if tech giants might jump in, Sun’s skeptical. AI hardware demands nine-figure budgets—that’s strictly CEO-level territory.“Can AI companions make it to the top table inside big corps right now? Doubt it.” Plus, product intuition borders on alchemy. It comes down to the number-one leader’s Taste.” Having led innovation arms at big companies, Sun knows the drill: throwing money at designers won’t fix it. Taste is a top-down call.
His Huawei partnership backs this up too. The AI car assistant “Hameng” took months of tight iteration to sync. For big companies, failing to properly agentize a product doesn’t just tank the IP—it creates massive brand risk.
Agility and sharp, founder-driven aesthetics? Those remain a startup’s unfair advantage, in Sun’s view.
And in this AI wave, Shanghai’s pulling ahead.“Shenzhen’s supply chain is lightning fast, but Shanghai packs denser talent in AI, branding, design, and consumer tech. The city’s support has been incredibly tangible—from office setups and talent acquisition to direct Token subsidies.”
Looking at 2026, the goal is breaking one million units to truly spin up the data flywheel. Beyond going global, Fuzozo is ramping up physical retail this year. During the May Day holiday, their Meiluocheng flagship opened its doors in Xuhui, giving customers hands-on experience. Plus, Robopoet just locked in partnerships with nationwide retailers boasting thousands of locations. Expect Fuzozo to hit more brick-and-mortar shelves throughout the summer.
Some treat AI companion toys like passing trends. Others see them as a niche hardware segment. Sun thinks both underestimate the ceiling.
“Give it 10 to 20 years, and this tiny niche will evolve into a middle-class staple. This is a platform-tier hardware opportunity,” Sun says. “There’s definitely going to be a breed of robots that hang close to your side—your little shadow, your buddy. Stuff we used to only see in sci-fi flicks and anime? That’s materializing right now.”
