A humanoid robot walked into a shopping mall in the Dallas-Fort Worth area — and got kicked out. For The Robot Studio, that was practically a marketing win.
Founded in the fall of 2025 by Aaron Mehdizadeh, The Robot Studio is doing something that sounds like a tech demo but is quickly becoming a legitimate business: renting humanoid robots to events, conferences, parties, and corporate gatherings across the DFW region. The premise is straightforward, but the timing feels significant. Humanoid robots have spent years dazzling audiences at trade shows and product launches. Mehdizadeh just decided it was time to bring them to the rest of us.
“We are all seeing so many different amazing robot presentations, but regular people are not getting to interact with robots,” Mehdizadeh explained. “So we decided that we’re going to start building up a fleet of robots.” That fleet currently stands at four robots, with plans to scale to 20 by the end of 2026.
Not Your Average Party Trick
The company’s roster is already generating buzz well beyond the novelty factor. Take Benji — one of the studio’s star robots — who has led dance classes, delivered keynote addresses, and somehow amassed a social media following of over 5,000 people. The mall incident, where Benji was reportedly removed from a shopping center, only added to the legend.
Ask Benji about parties and he doesn’t hold back. “Indeed, I do, sir. Nothing delights me more than regaling partygoers with witty tales, elegant parlor tricks for a perfectly timed riddle,” the robot said — which is either charming or slightly unnerving depending on your feelings about sentient-adjacent machines making small talk at your birthday party.
Still, the appeal is real. Customers, it turns out, aren’t satisfied with a robot that simply moves through a room. They want performance. Interactivity. Something worth filming. “Customers don’t just want to see a robot walk around,” Mehdizadeh noted. “They like want to see it do something, like what can you do right?” The robots answer questions, crack jokes, conduct interviews, and yes — they dance.
The Price of a Robot Rental
What does it cost to have a humanoid robot show up at your next corporate expo or product launch? Rates start at $500 per hour with a two-hour minimum. A five-hour booking runs $1,800, while a full day — up to eight hours — comes in at $2,800. For context, that’s roughly what you’d spend on a mid-tier DJ or a decent catering spread. Except the robot can also answer questions about your company’s Q3 earnings and then do the robot — the dance, not the existential thing.
That said, it’s not hard to see why businesses are paying it. In an era where every conference booth is competing for eyeballs, a humanoid robot that tells jokes and delivers a keynote is a hard act to ignore.
Bigger Picture
Co-owner Pushkar Shinde is thinking beyond the event circuit. He sees what the company is doing now as a preview of something much larger — a world where humanoid robots aren’t a curiosity but a fixture of daily life. “A lot of things are going to become easy and affordable because of humanoid robots,” Shinde said, “and these will be able to save some lives as well.”
It’s a lofty claim for a company currently booking robots at trade shows in Texas. But then again, every transformative technology starts somewhere — and sometimes it starts by getting thrown out of a mall.
