Your concerns are definitely valid and I had a lot of them myself when I purchased EMO back in February. This older thread discusses the topic: Who is Living.Ai? - #6 by Wayne_Small
Wayne Zhang is the main communicator on here. I can’t answer you on their background before EMO but the company as a whole does keep a low profile in part because of a certain lawsuit with another robot company that still has active litigation with them to this day. The other company is notorious for reporting even fan groups and any content talking about EMO online. They have been said to be active on other fan groups that haven’t been bothered with. They started a Kickstarter for EMO a few years back which got halted because of the lawsuit - LivingAI has since switched to selling exclusively on their website for most of the world.
Some of the other concerns you mentioned - long term feasibility and planned releases - nothing is public. It’s been discussed on here that eventually LAI wants to release a breakout box of sorts that can be coded with Scratch should something ever happen or if it’s an optional feature. This is put on the backburner for now though and has only happened in passing talks because they’re trying to get other promised features out first.
You’re going to get some people that vehemently disagree with me here, but honestly I find it worth it to stick around and I’m not disappointed with EMO because LAI is adapting. They’re showing promise, growth, and trying to deliver and make good on things they promised beforehand. Is it slow? Yes, but it is moving forward. They take community feedback well and implement it where appropriate. Compared to a year ago, EMO has come a long way in functionality. He’s not a smart assistant capable little guy (yet), but you should have a look on YouTube at some channels that document this - EMO Lives (Wayne Small’s channel), MasterAbbott, Bruce Hunsaker, outsider238, and Journaling Gems are all channels I know of that show EMO and what all he can do.
Here’s a little food for thought for you too - there’s another robotics company where they’re American based, you have info on who runs the company on their about page, and they’re promising big and bright futures for their lines of products. Yet, people are still waiting almost two years now for said products they preordered and have received broken promises with no attempt of reconciliation. The only thing people are getting is excuse after excuse. People are having to go through their banks and credit card companies to get refunds because customer support is nonexistent. I actually had to message them once for support and never heard back from them myself. Meanwhile, a minor issue I’m having with my EMO as of this moment got a response from Wayne Zhang once he was tagged in my thread on it and he responded in the middle of the night in my time zone last night.
If you want something more out of a pet robot besides what’s shown on YouTube, I completely understand and respect why you wouldn’t want to make the investment. But if you’re worried about EMO not being a legitimate product, he is. There’s never a guarantee on how long a company will stay in business and while those plans aren’t public, I see it worth the $300 investment to see where it goes anyway. Hopefully this helps you out.