When OpenClaw hype was at its peak in the beginning of 2026, a lot of people bought Mac Mini just to keep an agent running around the clock.
I never understood why people would spend $500 on a device to run OpenClaw like agents that are merely inferences to a commercial LLM like Claude and ChatGPT.
But these 'claws' are here to stay, and people are utilizing them to run their agent on dedicated hardware. And that's why we have dedicated hardware built around these agents.
Autonomous is a company known for standing desks and ergonomic chairs, although they did start as Robotbase, making personal robots.
Seems like they are back to their roots, sort of. They have a few "AI hardware" projects in their offering and that includes a thinking desk and a paper pet companion.
But the device I am going to feature today is a desk companion that runs AI agents and you can use it as an office assistant or an intern (no offense to interns).
The device is called Intern 2 because it's a follow-up to Intern, which was released six months ago. Let's learn more about it.
Intern 2 Specifications
- Board: Orange Pi 4 Pro, 8-core Allwinner A733 (2x Cortex-A76 + 6x Cortex-A55, up to 2.0GHz)
- Memory: 6GB LPDDR5
- Storage: 64GB onboard + up to 256GB expansion
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4
- New in Intern 2: voice interaction (dual mic, pickup up to 3m; 5W speaker) and browser control, on top of the existing Telegram/Slack/Discord channels
- Warranty: 1-year warranty, 30-day free returns
Intern 2 starts at $249 for the OpenClaw or Hermes editions, and $299 for the Developer edition.
So basically, the device ships with an agent framework already running. You pick OpenClaw or Hermes at checkout, plug the box into Wi-Fi, add it to a Telegram, Slack, or Discord group (WhatsApp gets added later through a separate QR pairing step), and it starts triaging your inbox, watching GitHub issues, and running whatever multi-step task you hand it, all without you touching a terminal.
I am guessing you will have to do some configuration to connect it to your mail and suff but that should not be too difficult if your main LLM is already connected to various services you use.
The board underneath is an Orange Pi 4 Pro: an 8-core Allwinner A733 chip, two beefier Cortex-A76 cores paired with six efficiency Cortex-A55 cores, and a 3 TOPS NPU. It's the kind of board you can buy separately, so Intern 2 isn't offering or hiding anything exotic. It is just packaging familiar SBC hardware into something that doesn't look like a dev board.
What does it look like? It looks like a pyramid with a glowing top. I kind of like the look.
The voice interaction is the main selling point here. Why type when you can just speak to it? Is that not what Tony Stark did as Iron Man?
Intern 2 adds dual far-field mics rated to pick up speech from up to 3 meters away, plus a 5W speaker, so you can just talk to the thing sitting on your desk the way you'd talk to a coworker (or an intern). Browser control is also there, letting the agent act on websites on your behalf instead of only working through chat integrations and APIs.
There are three editions to choose from:
- OpenClaw ($249): the default, framework preloaded, no setup beyond Wi-Fi and a chat app.
- Hermes ($249): identical hardware, running the Hermes agent out of the box instead.
- Developer ($299): ships with the shell open. You SSH in, and Claude Code comes preloaded, with room to swap in Codex or OpenCode if you'd rather run your own agent stack.
Open-source Autonomous OS
Intern 2 runs on Autonomous OS, an open-source operating system created by Autonomous for physical AI agents.
It handles sensing, memory, skills, and updates, while the actual "brain" is swappable between OpenClaw, Hermes, PicoClaw, Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, or any other agent framework you want to wire in.
Intern is the second reference device built on it, after a desk lamp called Autonomous Lamp. Since Autonomous is working on more AI-powered hardware, it makes sense to have a custom operating system.
Open sourcing is also the wise decision. These devices are more for tech enthusiasts, and some of them may tweak the OS to our liking and needs. So good job, Autonomous.
Pricing and Availability
Intern 2 is available right away.
As mentioned previously, it starts at $249 for the OpenClaw or Hermes editions and $299 for the Developer edition, with free shipping. Every unit ships hand-assembled and tested, backed by a 1-year warranty and 30-day free returns (I like that). Developer documentation is available here.
Should you buy Intern 2 is a question only you can answer. If you have interacted with Nanoclaw, Hermes Agent, etc. and like the idea of interacting with them via voice, this device should interest you.
Sure, this can be built from scratch, especially when the operating system is also open source. But not everyone has the time and skills to do that. People spend money on 'out of the box' experiences after all. I would not mind splurging on it, as I am sucker for such gadgets.
So, would you spend some money and get yourself an "AI Intern"?
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