Toyota built a $10 billion private utopia—what’s going on in there?

But these opt-in numbers come from a highly curated group of participants living in a controlled environment. The real world is a different place. Daisuke Tanaka, a resident of Woven City, is something like an on-site digital matchmaker for Weavers. It’s not love they’re looking for, though; he connects creators and startups to spark collaborations every second Friday. “Sometimes we’re talking about technologies and products, but sometimes they’re much more casual events,” he said. He cited a next-gen vending machine under development as an example of the sorts of new products coming from this collaboration. “They want to combine the photo-voltaics with the vending machine so it can run anywhere,” he said. Expansive coworking spaces dot Woven City, designed to foster spontaneous brainstorming, with plenty of 3D printers scattered throughout for rapid prototyping. The stated goal is to spur creation, innovation, and successful startups. The 20 prototype Swake machines also can’t leave the grounds, which limits the amount of real-world testing they’re getting. From an operational standpoint, Woven City is a business operating under Woven by Toyota, Inc. Its financials aren’t public (Toyota would not comment on total build costs or how much its residents pay to live there), but Absmeier said Woven City is expected to be profitable. “Ultimately, we have to be a long-term sustainable business,” he said. That’s why so much Toyota tech is being tested here, including efforts to refine systems like the AI Vision Engine before selling them to municipalities. Toyota has several closed test tracks around the world, but Woven City acts as a safe space to test a far broader suite of services and devices before they’re commercialized. “Physical AI” was everywhere at Woven City: robots of all shapes and sizes that, for the most part, didn’t seem to do much. There were robots for delivering packages to residents and others for carrying home groceries. A self-balancing, two-wheeled robot with one arm carried trays of food around apartments, and another had a single gripper designed to potentially help around the house someday. Most of them looked like design concepts without much practical use. Why rely on such a complicated solution when modern Teslas can perform similar tasks using only onboard sensors? Toyota says it’s prioritizing safety, and Tesla’s Summon feature has hardly delivered on that front. Even the manhole covers, featuring a stylized Mt. Fuji, were cleverly designed. Woven City is certainly cold and corporate in places, but it also shows the level of polish that urban planning and design can reach when a single, well-funded corporate entity makes all the calls and foots the bill.