Cartwheel Robotics
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Cartwheel Robotics was a Nevada-based humanoid robotics startup founded in 2021 by Scott LaValley, a veteran of Boston Dynamics and Disney Imagineering (where he led development of a fully autonomous Baby Groot bipedal robot). It set out to build 'lovable' humanoids in contrast to the industry's industrial focus: the flagship Yogi robot featured toddler proportions, a large head and cartoonish aesthetics reminiscent of Casper the Friendly Ghost, driven by a proprietary 'motion language model' (MLM) that turned text or voice commands into expressive behaviors, while a customizable variant called Speedy was aimed at public spaces like museums and science centers. With a lean team of seven and just $3 million in outside capital, it operated largely revenue-funded for years before pivoting to a full humanoid.
02 / Cartwheel Robotics FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
The collapse came down to capital. First, LaValley said the company 'didn't find the right capital partner to bridge the gap between our progress and our potential' — it could build an impressive prototype but not fund manufacturing at scale. Second, the hardware 'valley of death': the lean, revenue-funded model that worked for a services business could not support the long time horizons and deep investment a full humanoid required. Third, the financing structure backfired: bridge capital raised via convertible promissory notes was still debt until conversion — LaValley's own lesson was that 'a convertible note is debt' — and creditors claiming around $700,000 filed for involuntary bankruptcy in March 2026 after the shutdown. Engineered Arts, maker of Ameca, reportedly explored the technology but saw limited value in the startup without the team behind it.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy Observer, sourcing PACER: an involuntary liquidation bankruptcy petition was filed against Cartwheel Robotics Inc. on 19 Mar 2026 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Nevada, case 26-50278. Petitioning creditors named on docket entry #1 are RSF Robotics I, the Wong Family Revocable Trust, and Nevada Battle Born Growth Escalator, Inc. The case remained open as of the public docket check. Founder-run archive cartwheel.info and Mike Kalil (5 Feb 2026) state operations had already ceased in Dec 2025 / after failing to secure funding for the Yogi humanoid.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
February 2026: founder and CEO Scott LaValley announced on LinkedIn that Cartwheel Robotics was closing its doors, sharing a farewell video of the Speedy prototype walking on Moore Pier with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background; he wrote that after four intense years, the company 'didn't find the right capital partner to bridge the gap between our progress and our potential.'
- 02
March 2026: the company filed for bankruptcy; trustee Bradley G. Sims began investigating where the assets, records, IP and digital systems had gone, with petitioning creditors — including RSF Robotics I, the Wong Family Revocable Trust and Nevada Battle Born Growth Escalator, Inc. — seeking to recover around $700,000 said to be owed through promissory notes.
- 03
The legal fallout continued with filings naming Engineered Arts (maker of Ameca) as an interested party that had explored Cartwheel's technology but found limited value in the startup without the team behind it.
- 04
LaValley later joined Google DeepMind's robotics efforts; his closing message to fellow founders was that 'no money is better than the wrong money.'