Today’s Features:
- Curio, Miko, Bondu, My Phoenyx: toys and robots imbued with LLM capabilities.
- Yoto, Tonies: audiobook players designed for kids.
- Astrocade, Rosebud: text-to-game products.
- Rooms, Gizmo: feeds of interactive experiences.
Give Build-A-Bear a Brain, Not Just a Heart
(But please, no creepy stuff)
Millennial parents are raising the largest generation of digital natives…and they’re exhausted.
They’ve read the research. They’ve felt the guilt. They’ve seen their four-year-old navigate an iPad with the precision of a trained surgeon. They’ve heard the warnings about language delays, emotional dysregulation, and kids zoning out behind blue-light rectangles.
Meanwhile, toy shelves are packed with “smart” devices that are anything but — pre-recorded, inflexible, quickly outgrown. We smell an opportunity. Maybe toys, too, can have an AI moment?
Companies like Curio, Miko, and Bondu are already hitting the market with LLM-powered trinkets for kids to engage with. Think: voice-to-voice play companions, creative co-creation, adaptive learning moments, and replayability through personality. Or even language learning a la My Phoenyx.
Bondu is one of a handful of players developing snuggable AI
Companies like Yoto and Tonies have already proven the lo-fi version of this works like charm.
For the last decade, screens have become the accidental babysitter. But what if the future of play was not about more stimulus or more pixels; but rather about presence, co-creating stories, building worlds, and answering the one question every kid asks more times than anyone can count: “Play with me?”
A few early predictions:
- Every major toy brand will release a screenless AI line by the end of 2026.
- Kids will expect toys to be interactive — maybe not visually, but conversationally — and ideally less gremlin-like.
- Audio collectibles become the new downloadable content.
- “Family AI settings” become as normal as baby monitors. And with an ability to access activity summaries, curiosity insights, and install customizable guardrails (e.g. no discussions of violence and only speak in Spanish on Tuesdays).
- Micro-learning emerges as a top driver of parental willingness to subscribe.
We’re watching this space closely, excitedly, and with the same sense of wonder the kids feel. Will AI enabled toys dominate this holiday shopping season? No. But next year, we’d put money on it.
The “YouTube for Games” is Around the Bend
(The GenAI gaming seeds are sprouting quickly. ~2026 feels like the breakout year)
Generative AI is set to revolutionize the gaming world, making content creation accessible to anyone with an idea. This is a massive opportunity given the scale of the gaming market: over 3 billion gamers and nearly $187 billion in revenue — notably, larger than the music and movie industries combined.
The ability to create a game from a text prompt (known as “text-to-game”) is now a reality, with products like Astrocade and Rosebud offering early glimpses. Companies like Rooms and Gizmo are taking TikTok-like feeds and making them interactive and remix-able.
Gizmo is making fun…well, fun.
Rapid fire thoughts:
- The Paradigm Shift: Just as mobile and YouTube democratized video creation, generative AI and new user-generated content platforms are poised to do the same for games.
- Current Hurdles: While impressive, today’s tools still face challenges: the games often aren’t default fun, and the creation tools aren’t unique enough to help creators effectively stand out or monetize.
- The Breakout Moment: The breakout is expected within the next 1–2 years. A platform that solves the fun and monetization problems will explode into the zeitgeist, triggering a new era of gaming content and creators.
When world-building capabilities (*cough* Genie *cough) become more mainstream, who knows how deep these rabbit holes will go. We just know it will be a fun ride in the meantime.
Today’s article is brought to you by your friendly, neighborhood consumer team at GV. Down to kick the tires on any of the above? Hit us up at consumer@gv.com.