AI hardware hype has gone through the roof.

"Shoulder to Shoulder with the Sun"

As the old saying goes: when the wind is strong enough, even pigs can fly.

These days in hype-land, if you can't grab the风口 (wind tunnel), you just... fly anyway.

Take CES 2026, which just wrapped up. Among all the cutting-edge domestic inventions, one thing stuck with me most: MOVA's Pilot 70, a module for robot vacuums.

Why? It flies. That's it.

Is our home really that hard to clean? Do robot vacuums need actual wings now?

Some breathless write-ups argue that flying solves the eternal problems of multi-floor homes, split-levels, and terraced balconies.

I survive in a Beijing rental and have no idea what those words mean. All I know is:

First, just buy more robot vacuums.

Second, this thing definitely won't turn on in no-fly zones.

A mid-clean crash is whatever. Moving to Hebei to accommodate your vacuum? That's a bad trade.

The only use case I can think of: shared robot vacuums. One per Soviet-style apartment block. Finish the first floor, fly to the second. Hallways, stairwells, national highways. One room down, the world to go.

Sure, the intention — let robot vacuums reach more places — is good. Maybe the execution went sideways. We'll give them that.

But some projects? No understanding possible.

Like BOOBOO, billed as "the world's first flying robot pet."

The wild part: it also showed up at CES 2026. Articles claimed people were constantly holding up phones to film it, that it was totally viral, totally blowing up.

But I searched everywhere, every browser. Not a single candid video of this chubby bird.

Not even on the Xiaohongshu pages of SKYRIS's founder or employees — no product photos at all. Very mysterious. Very classified.

What you can find plenty of: these acrylic keychains

Later I checked their official site. Oh — even the product promo is AI-generated.

You guys are really AI Native. This product is truly flying, huh? Never coming down?

And in the video, this bird keeps flapping its wings to hover. I wondered: artistic license, or does physics not exist? Can it actually fly like this?

So I studied the Q&A. Their answer: stay tuned for the next episode.

Thirsty for knowledge, I sent Muqiu to call the founder, Yunuo Zhang, and ask about the technical details.

He confirmed it: yes, BOOBOO flies exactly like in the video — a chubby bird, flapping its wings, airborne. The specific solution is confidential, but free as a bird, baby.

He generously added: feel free to roast us.

He actually seemed excited. When the product finally drops, he wants to see how the trash-talking authors and their mocking readers collapse from the sheer contrast, wallowing in shame.

I'm dying. Whether I believe it or not, you clearly believe it yourself.

The best part: he emphasized that BOOBOO's CES appearance wasn't a product launch. It was a c-o-n-c-e-p-t l-a-u-n-c-h. Meaning, no actual product is totally normal.

Oh wow. "Concept launch." Now Orwell understands what Newspeak really means.

Back in the day, phone and car makers did concept products. Even if you couldn't touch them, there was a physical thing to look at.

Now AI hardware startups do "concept launches" with an AI-generated video and call it a day?

This isn't a concept launch. This is PPT entrepreneurship, but you're wasting tokens instead of slides.

At this rate, I'm about to do high-intensity concept launches too. Sora 2 generates 20 videos a day; I could concept-launch 100 AI hardware products a month, easy.

Just absolutely震撼首发 (shocking debut). The concept is immaculate.

Of course, hype, PPT entrepreneurship, and wild imagination aren't crimes.

The real question remains: what's the point of flying?

Did market research show pet birds drive more consumption than dogs?

Did someone read the news and decide to bet on the low-altitude economy?

Because current AI companion pets aren't that intelligent, the companionship is meh, and it's basically a competition over who has more fuzz. The interactive experience is worse than a Northeastern wonton joint.

In a赛道 (track) this jerry-rigged, your innovation is making the plushie fly higher? The hype is showing.

And they actually got 12 million RMB from Xiaohongshu.

Maybe Xiaohongshu envisioned the scene: 集美集帅 (bros and besties) posing with cute fake birds at founder cafes. Too city, too aesthetic.

Later I did real research. Seriously: if a startup involves flying, there's basically nothing normal people can understand.

Take GRU Space, hot earlier this year. Claims it'll build a hotel on the moon, use SpaceX to haul construction materials, and send rich dumb foreigners there on SpaceX rockets. $2 million a night.

This framing is slick. Until SpaceX achieves lunar cargo and commercial crewed flights, the moon hotel can't begin — all blame goes to Elon Musk.

But the project already secured seed funding. The company has two people. Who says that's not success?

Then there's drone food delivery, flying taxis. Sometimes I suspect these inventions are performance art, satirizing how little delivery drivers and rideshare workers earn.

But here's the thing: however absurd these flying projects, the moment they appear, media outlets swarm, investors throw cash. Wild. Incomprehensible.

After much thought, I reached a conclusion: flying startups are fundamentally about building spectacles.

Yes. For these products, using your normal startup-evaluation brain is wrong from the root. Because these things don't serve users. They don't serve investors. They serve social media.

Disposable content products.

Utility? Vision? Nonsense. Believe me, when these founder-bros hold brainstorming sessions, the whiteboard has one question: how do we go viral on Xiaohongshu?

Based on my years online, virality has two paths.

One: genuinely creative, quality content, well-produced. Deserved success.

Two: thoroughly mediocre and boring, but resource-intensive — lots of labor, money, effort, sacrifice. In other words: building spectacles.

Remember Tim's livestream the other day? Surviving in the snow for however many hours, kept pushing to my feed. I clicked in — dude wasn't talking, wasn't moving. Zero clue what was燃 (lit) about it.

But people watched. The logic: damn, setting up this stream seems like a lot of work. Freezing out there must suck. Tim may not have功劳 (merit) but he has苦劳 (hard work). Let's give him a like!

Or back in the day, Kuaishou's Northeastern stunt legends — Brother Dao, Brother Hu. Biting lighters, jumping into the Yellow River, drilling through ice holes. Any real creative content? No.

People just thought: this seems rough. Wouldn't want to do it ourselves. Here's a free heart for you.

These are all spectacles. Spectacles have no hierarchy. But right now, the most effective spectacle is flying.

First, flying is expensive and dangerous. You might need licenses and permits. Regular people can't figure it out.

Second, netizens have this朴素 (simple, unadorned) reverence for flight. Some民间科学家 (folk scientist) builds a machine and takes to the sky? "Bravery is humanity's anthem." "Brave people enjoy the world first." Then come the tears.

Like that神奇阿宇 (Magic A-Yu) guy. Hung a hot air balloon in his living room, flew up. Nearly 100,000 likes. Very stunt, very wild.

My first reaction: this guy's impressive. Brave. No way I'd do this. I'm pure废物 (trash).

But then I thought: impressive, sure, but this spectacle-building选题 (topic selection) — at least conceptually — is way too easy to replicate.

Including you, dear reader. If you're not acrophobic like me, and willing to rent a hot air balloon or helicopter, you can send anything skyward — yourself, your car, your Hermès bag, a banner with viral copy — and it's 100% trending.

Purely using flight as paid promotion.

Now, Tim, Brother Dao, Brother Hu, Magic A-Yu — they're building spectacles. Meaningless to me, but I have zero issue. That's the self-contained business model of content creation. Making money isn't shameful.

But using the same spectacle-building to hype a startup? That's scam behavior. You're releasing a product into the free market. It should mean something to me. It should have some利他性 (altruism).

It can't be: I liked, I paid attention, your video blew up, you scammed investors, and the product's a ghost. I'm the fool. That's not right.

So my sincere advice to these entrepreneurs: stop messing with flight. One, you'll crash eventually. Two, the masses don't have this burning urge to trespass into heaven.

If your tech is weak and you're seeking a弯道超车 (shortcut), there's another path besides going up: going down.

Look at Musk's Grok. Can't beat the Big Three, so it found its niche with unrestricted NSFW content.

Only caveat: go down overseas first. Don't mess up our healthy internet environment.

Finally, if you're an entrepreneur who hasn't figured out your 2026 pitch deck, here are some predictions for flying AI products:

1. World's First Flying AI Voice Recorder

Worried your voice recorder isn't discreet enough? Privacy and ethics risks?

Or your voices aren't loud enough, missing that lossless audio?

Buy the world's first flying AI voice recorder. Automatically flies to the speaker's mouth, missing not a single meeting minute.

2. World's First Flying AI Earbuds

If you wear AI earbuds but long hair covers them — invisible, unshowoffable — didn't you waste your money?

We developed the world's first flying AI earbuds. Turbine airflow lifts your hair, so the whole office knows you're the AI tech king.

3. World's First Flying AI Glasses

Yeah, all these AI glasses makers whining about heavy batteries pressing on ears and noses — just not thinking hard enough.

Make it fly. No ear or nose contact. Problem solved.

World's first flying AI glasses. Uses BOOBOO's same wing technology. Zero-feel wearing.

Stay tuned.

(Cover image generated by ChatGPT. Purely human-written text.)

Finally, a job posting for Jinqiu Fund — one of the main backers of the葬爱宇宙 (projects roasted herein).

The葬爱宇宙's growth-stage designated sponsor is Ant Group. Angel-stage backers include HSG and Jinqiu Fund 👋😭👋

These bosses have been exceptionally active, pouring狂暴活力 (ferocious vitality) into AI projects. Let us salute these sources of liquidity in the venture market 🫡