So, like a large scale scam to get your "downpayment" ?
How would remote human operators scale, especially for the $20k "ownership" model? I presume the actual hardware probably costs them at least $10k to make, so after about 400 hours of "remote operator use", it's all loss on the company?
I suspect they have a limit on use, or a pay-to-use-remotely thing they neglected to announce.
There is no way that the $500/mo or $20k flat price points are profitable. Cash influx is definitely important, but it seems to me that the real "value" from deploying with remote operators to handle any interesting tasks is in building an in-home data moat.
That could be profitable if it works well. If it proves very useful in the real world owners will brag about and talk about it making this the "in thing" to have. When people buy it that means they can scale. If this takes off I expect in 10 years the price will be about $5000 each and they are selling enough to make a lot of money. I'm assuming that they will design/build it to last about 10 years before wearing out which means repeat customers - not quite as good as a subscription but still something wall street likes to see.
There are a lot of best cases in the above. Time will tell if it works. I'm not betting on it, but I'm cautious so don't read too much into that.
How would remote human operators scale, especially for the $20k "ownership" model? I presume the actual hardware probably costs them at least $10k to make, so after about 400 hours of "remote operator use", it's all loss on the company?
I suspect they have a limit on use, or a pay-to-use-remotely thing they neglected to announce.