Samsung’s Ballie robot rolls to a halt

Samsung’s cute, rolling robot assistant, once promised for homes by summer 2025, has now been shelved.

This shift marks a sudden turn from the optimism Samsung showed when Ballie was first introduced in 2020. The small, round robot was meant to be a mobile smart home assistant that could follow you, control devices, and project images onto walls. Now, Samsung is effectively putting an end to hopes for a commercial launch.

According to Bloomberg, Samsung has decided to turn Ballie from a planned consumer product into an “active innovation platform” for internal use only. Still, the website where you could sign up to “be the first to meet Ballie” is still up.

Samsung hasn’t officially announced a cancellation, but it’s clear that Ballie won’t be coming to stores in its current form.

Ballie seemed like a smart home dream at first. But in reality, it faced the same problems that have troubled consumer robots for years. One big issue is usefulness. A rolling robot needs to offer more than just novelty. Voice assistants are already in speakers, phones, TVs, and watches. For Ballie to be worthwhile, it had to do more and do it reliably, without being intrusive or awkward.

Ballie’s pause shows a bigger truth: consumer home robots are still very hard to get right. Amazon’s Astro robot never became popular and was discontinued in 2024. Other startups have either shut down or moved away from home robotics entirely.

Samsung might revisit Ballie in the future, especially as AI models improve. But a surprise launch isn’t likely anytime soon.