On August 11, 2026, ZEALS held Robots & Sake, the U.S. launch party for D1, its compact humanoid built in Japan, at 164 Townsend Street in San Francisco. Sign-ups passed 200 and more than 100 guests came over the course of the evening. D1 worked the floor itself, greeting arrivals and demonstrating the hospitality tasks it already performs at deployment sites in Japan.

The event paired robotics research with sake. Japanese snacks and sake were served, and after a demo from D1 and a panel discussion, the rest of the evening was given over to networking.

The sign-up list was made up of the people building physical AI in the United States. Stanford and UC Berkeley each accounted for 20 or more sign-ups from their flagship robotics labs. The Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames, Physical Intelligence, Google DeepMind, NVIDIA, OpenAI, xAI, Microsoft Research, and Amazon were also on the list.

D1 also ran a navigation demo at the venue. Asked by a guest where the restroom was, it led them there and made its own way back through the crowded room.

The Reveal and the Panel

ZEALS Founder and CEO Masa took the stage and revealed D1. He also described the company's plan to bring humanoids built in Japan to hospitals, hotels, and commercial spaces in the United States.

CTO Shu then moderated a panel with three people working on physical AI: Vivian Feig, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University; Takahiro Miki, Research Scientist at Google DeepMind; and David Chen, GM of Robotics at LiveKit.

The 20-minute discussion centered on the gap between the lab and the field: what it takes to deploy research at a real site, whether Japan really has an edge in operational data, what kind of data labs need to move their work forward, and what is still missing on the hardware side.