Shift Robotics Uses Free NYC Apartment Cleanings to Gather Household Robot Training Data

Shift Robotics offered free apartment cleaning in New York City last week. The initial 250 sessions sold out almost immediately after the company's launch video drew more than 8 million views. Harry Kilberg, Shift's US General Manager, said thousands of people tried to book the service.

"We knew this idea is world-changing, so we thought it would go viral," he said. Shift is the consumer-facing brand of microagi, a German AI research lab founded in a Munich hacker house in 2025. The lab is headquartered in Germany and was started by Bercan Kilic and Yoan Iliev, both former Formula One aerodynamic engineers, and Anton Poletaev, a former researcher at The Alan Turing Institute.

Cleaners wear head-mounted cameras while doing dishes, mopping floors, and folding laundry. The footage is turned into training data for AI labs and robotics companies, with faces and screens automatically blurred and no audio captured. Shift operates in 15 countries and has 14,000 operators collecting real-world data, according to Kilberg.

Microagi uses the data for its own internal research and sells processed footage to other companies. Kilberg said the idea came from early users who began recording themselves doing tasks around their homes and offering cleaning to neighbors while Shift paid for the service. Others stocked shelves at local bodegas or volunteered at soup kitchens while recording the work.

Kilberg declined to say how much people are paid to record themselves doing chores. He said robots that can reliably handle household tasks are still far off, and people are currently paid to gather the examples AI systems need to learn. Shift has especially caught on in Turkey.

Kilberg said the company plans to expand across the United States and add free or subsidized services beyond cleaning, including cooking and plumbing. Kilberg described Shift as a marketplace aimed at accelerating the transition from an economy where people work out of necessity to one where everyday goods and services can become increasingly abundant and accessible.