A San Francisco robotics startup is being taken to court by an Airbnb host who claims the company’s “robotic prototype testing” caused extensive damage to his home.
In the lawsuit filed on May 26, 2026, Sean Donovan is seeking more than $12,000 in damages from the Bay Area startup The Bot Company. The court case was first reported by SFGate, which also interviewed Donovan about the unprecedented mess he encountered after the startup’s employees supposedly rented his former childhood home through Airbnb.
The first clue that the guests were not typical tech startup employees needing a temporary crash pad came when Donovan was taking care of the trash during the guests’ stay. He told SFGate about seeing “bundles of wires” throughout the house and a robot he described as a 6-foot-tall “Roomba with treads” that also resembled the cybernetic Borg from the Star Trek universe.
Donovan described more than 30 people coming and going during the approximately two-week rental period in April, with his Ring camera capturing snippets of outdoor conversations in which people discussed taking shifts.
Whatever the guests were doing, they allegedly left behind paint damage, floor damage, damage to a kitchen doorframe, bent poles in dishwasher racks, water damage and scratches on wooden credenzas, damage to a living room coffee table, scratches on a laundry washer, broken laser cut art, and a dining room table described as an “antique family heirloom damaged with scratches and water marks.”
Other perhaps telling signs include cabinets and drawers emptied of their contents and moved elsewhere, along with decorative items and books moved from shelves to drawers. One shoe rack, along with a pair of shoes, was also missing from a locked bedroom closet, which Donovan’s lawsuit, filed in the San Francisco Superior Court, describes as “potentially a criminal matter.”
