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The Rabbit R1 is a novel AI-powered device
They are backordered until July
Resellers are flipping early preorders for double what they paid
You might not have noticed, but AI is a big deal right now. It turns out LLMs are useful for more than just college students cheating on their assignments, and there are a lot of companies out there trying to build the Next Big Thing. One of these is Rabbit, the team behind the Rabbit R1. This device is a meld of physical design and Bay Area buzzwords, and launched earlier this year. Production cannot keep up with demand though, and resellers have been making a profit by flipping their preorders to would-be early adopters. Let’s take a look.
If you’re on Twitter (and it is called Twitter), you might have been getting ads recently for the Humane AI Pin. Essentially a wearable product with voice recognition hooked up to a larger neural network. You can ask it to Google things for you or stalk your ex’s Instagram hands free!
The Rabbit R1 is conceptually similar but functionally distinct. Rather than relying on a Large Language Model a la ChatGPT, the R1 utilizes what Rabbit calls a “Large Action Model”, or LAM. In short, the device is trained on how humans use apps so that it can function as an assistant.
For example, you can ask the R1 to update your social media handle. The R1 would log into the app on your account, look for the profile option, then update the name based on what you asked it.
The R1 is essentially operating as a one stop shop for interacting with apps. How compelling that sounds is probably different from person to person, but AI guys seem really excited by the idea.
So the R1 officially launched earlier this year. The earliest of early adopters were able to snag one back in January for $200. There were only 10,000 available during launch, which are expected to ship by the end of this month.
Preorders for new devices came soon after. Starting on January 13, a rolling batch system opened up. The sooner you placed your order, the sooner you’d get it. Batch 2 was slated for an April-May delivery window, and filled up within a few hours.
Placing a preorder through Rabbit’s site right now will add you to Batch 6. According to Rabbit, these will reach customers in July.
If you’re a seasoned reseller, you probably get where this is going. There are a lot of opportunities to make a profit flipping, but usually they require some intersection of factors.
People need to want the item badly enough to overpay. Supply has to be constricted so they can’t just buy it from the manufacturer. It needs to be something expensive but also not that useful, which means customers don’t mind the idea of forking over extra cash to a reseller. And it helps when there’s some FOMO in the mix.
The R1 is almost out. There are buyers out there willing to throw $200 at an unproven bit of nebulous tech, but they’re being asked to wait until Summer to get it. In just a few weeks, the devices they’re despairing over will be out in the world, taunting them.
What else can they do but buy from a reseller? The Rabbit R1 has been reselling since preorders opened, but we’ve seen a recent uptick in prices. Batch 2 Rabbit R1s, the ones expected to start shipping in April have surged on eBay, and several have sold for over $400.
An easy $200 in profit AND you get to rip off an AI dweeb at the same time? We’d make that deal. RC members were tipped off to this product back in January while Batch 2 preorders were open.
With how fast the initial 10,000 units sold out, placing an order for the next batch was a pretty obvious choice. If you were one of the members that did, you punched a ticket to some easy money in a few months. Many resellers were able to flip their preorders by February or sooner.
That’s all for today. Subscribe to our newsletter if you want to learn more about reselling. It’s a wide, weird world, and you’d be surprised by the kind of stuff that resells. Check out our articles on the ultra-rare SpongeBob Xbox or Trader Joe’s reusable bags that people are going crazy for.
A non-record flip for Record Store Day
Call that a Victory Royale!
