Microagi · 2026-05-28 · major
Shift Lands in New York With Free Home Cleaning in Exchange for First-Person Camera Footage — Microagi's NYC App Hits Thousands of Bookings on Day One While the German Parent Pays Over 10,000 Operators $5M+ a Quarter Across 15 Countries
GETTHESHIFT, INC. sends vetted cleaners to NYC apartments wearing camera devices, then anonymizes and sells the first-person footage to AI labs training household robots. The Microagi-backed app says it took thousands of bookings on launch day.
Microagi's new Shift app cleans your NYC apartment for free if you let a camera-clad operator film the whole job.
Key specs
| Operators paid q1 fy26 | 10,000+ |
|---|---|
| Q1 fy26 operator payouts usd | 5M+ |
| Countries microagi operates in | 15 |
| Hn front page rank | 16 |
| Hn points when fetched | 142 |
What is it?
Shift is a New York-only home cleaning service from German robotics-data startup Microagi. The legal entity, GETTHESHIFT, INC., dispatches vetted human cleaners who wear chest-mounted camera devices during a two-hour appointment. Customers pay nothing; in return, Shift records the cleaner's first-person view and uses the footage as training data for household robots.
How does it work?
An operator arrives with a camera rig and works through a normal cleaning routine — wiping counters, stacking dishes, picking up clutter. On-device or cloud machine learning blurs faces and personally identifying information before the video is uploaded. The anonymized clips are then licensed to AI labs building robot foundation models, where data on cluttered real homes is far scarcer than lab footage. Shift sits inside Microagi, which already runs comparable data-collection programs and says it has paid more than 10,000 operators over five million dollars in the first fiscal quarter of 2026 across 15 countries.
Why does it matter?
Robot foundation models like Pi 0.7, Gemini Robotics-ER, and Molmo Act keep hitting the same wall: not enough diverse, real-world manipulation footage. Shift turns the consumer relationship inside out — instead of paying for data through contractors, it gives away a household service and harvests the byproduct. If the model holds up to privacy scrutiny, it points to a future where free physical services are subsidised by their training-data exhaust, the same way free email and search were subsidised by ads.
Who is it for?
robotics teams, embodied-AI researchers, privacy watchers, NYC residents
Try it
Book a slot via the Shift app in New York City