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1X Neo (stylized as NEO) is a bipedal humanoid robot developed by 1X Technologies (formerly Halodi Robotics), a Norwegian-American robotics company. Designed specifically for use in private homes, NEO is a lightweight, human-sized android that combines a bio-inspired tendon-driven actuation system with a soft, pinch-free exterior and near-silent operation. The robot was first introduced as NEO Beta in August 2024, followed by the improved NEO Gamma variant in February 2025. In October 2025, 1X opened consumer pre-orders at a price of $20,000, with initial U.S. deliveries planned for 2026.
NEO represents a deliberate departure from the heavy, industrial-grade humanoids being developed by other companies. Instead of targeting factory floors, 1X has positioned NEO as a consumer product for everyday households, prioritizing safety, quiet operation, and natural human interaction. The robot is backed by significant investment from OpenAI, Samsung Next, EQT Ventures, and Tiger Global, with the company having raised over $125 million in total funding.
1X Technologies was founded in May 2014 in Moss, Norway, by roboticist Bernt Oivind Bornich along with co-founders Phuong Nguyen, Jorgen Sundell, and Pal Loken.[1] The company was originally named Halodi Robotics and focused on developing safe actuators and full-body control systems for industrial and healthcare robotics applications. Bornich, who studied Robotics and Nanoelectronics at the University of Oslo, had been interested in electromechanics since age 11 and envisioned building general-purpose robots that could coexist safely with humans.[2]
The company's early research centered on its proprietary Revo1 motor, a high-torque brushless direct current (BLDC) motor paired with low-gear-ratio cable drives. At the time of its development, the Revo1 was described as the highest torque-to-weight direct drive motor in the world.[3] This motor technology became the foundation for the company's first commercial robot, EVE.
In 2018, 1X (then Halodi Robotics) released EVE, a wheeled, self-balancing humanoid robot designed for logistics, security, and medical environments. Standing 188 cm (6 ft 2 in) tall and weighing 87 kg (192 lb), EVE used wheels rather than legs for locomotion and was capable of traveling at speeds up to 14.5 km/h (9 mph). The robot could carry loads of up to 15 kg and operate for approximately six hours on a single charge.[4]
EVE's most notable commercial deployment came through a partnership with ADT Commercial (Everon), which ordered 140 to 250 EVE units for autonomous night security patrols in commercial buildings across the United States.[5] This deployment represented one of the largest single orders of humanoid robots at the time and provided 1X with crucial real-world operational data.
In 2022, Halodi Robotics rebranded as 1X Technologies and shifted its primary focus from industrial and enterprise robotics to domestic consumer robotics. The company began developing humanoid assistants intended for use in private homes, leveraging the data and experience gained from EVE's commercial deployments to train artificial intelligence models for household tasks.[6]
In July 2025, 1X consolidated its teams from Moss, Norway, and Sunnyvale, California, into a new 80,000-square-foot global headquarters in Palo Alto, California, designed to accommodate up to 400 employees. The company maintains manufacturing operations in both Palo Alto (Hayward facility) and Moss, Norway.[7]
The first version of the NEO platform, called NEO Beta, was unveiled on August 30, 2024.[8] The NEO Beta was a proof-of-concept humanoid standing 165 cm (5 ft 5 in) tall and weighing 30 kg (66 lb). It featured 1X's proprietary Tendon Drive actuation system and hands with 22 degrees of freedom each. The robot could walk at up to 4 km/h and sprint at 12 km/h, with a battery life of two to four hours.
NEO Beta demonstrated the core design philosophy behind the platform: a lightweight, bio-inspired humanoid built specifically for safe operation around people in domestic settings. The robot used tendon-driven actuators rather than traditional rigid gearboxes, creating movements described as inherently gentler and more compliant than those produced by conventional servo motors.[9]
On February 21, 2025, 1X introduced NEO Gamma, a substantially improved iteration of the NEO platform.[10] The Gamma version incorporated several major upgrades over the Beta:
| Feature | NEO Beta | NEO Gamma |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware reliability | Baseline | 10x improvement |
| Operating noise | ~32 dB | ~22 dB (10 dB reduction) |
| Exterior covering | Exposed frame | Knitted nylon suit (machine-washable) |
| Joint safety | Partially covered | Fully enclosed, pinch-proof |
| Gait quality | Basic bipedal walking | Natural human gait with arm swings |
| Movement capabilities | Walking, basic tasks | Squatting, sitting in chairs, running |
| Audio system | Basic speakers | 4-mic beamforming array + 3-speaker system |
| AI model | Early Redwood prototype | Improved Redwood with whole-body control |
The NEO Gamma's exterior is wrapped in a knitted nylon body suit manufactured using a Japanese Shima Seiki machine through a whole-garment seamless knitting process. This 3D-printed nylon fabric conforms to the robot's body without impeding movement and is designed to reduce potential injuries from robot-to-human contact. The suit is machine-washable and available in three colors: tan, gray, and dark brown.[11]
NEO Gamma also introduced "Emotive Ear Rings," a design element intended to improve communication between the robot and its users. The robot's dynamic control skills, including natural walking with arm swings and the ability to squat and sit, are learned through reinforcement learning from human motion capture data, running at 100 Hz.[12]
On October 28, 2025, 1X officially launched NEO as a consumer product and opened pre-orders through its online store.[13] The company described NEO as "the world's first consumer-ready humanoid robot designed to transform life at home." Two purchasing options were offered:
Additionally, customers could place a fully refundable $200 deposit to reserve a unit. 1X announced plans to begin U.S. deliveries in 2026 and expand to international markets starting in 2027.[14]
NEO stands 167 cm (5 ft 6 in) tall and weighs 30 kg (66 lb), making it one of the lightest bipedal humanoids in development. Its human-proportioned frame is designed to navigate standard home environments, including doorways, staircases, and furniture layouts. The robot's 75 total degrees of freedom enable a wide range of movements across the full body.[15]
| Specification | Value |
|---|---|
| Height | 167 cm (5 ft 6 in) |
| Weight | 30 kg (66 lb) |
| Total degrees of freedom | 75 |
| Degrees of freedom per hand | 22 |
| Walking speed | Up to 4 km/h (2.5 mph) |
| Sprinting speed | Up to 12 km/h (7.5 mph) |
| Payload capacity (lift) | 68 kg (150 lb) |
| Payload capacity (carry) | 25 kg (55 lb) |
| Operating noise | 22 dB |
| Battery capacity | 5,200 mAh |
| Battery life | Up to 5.5 hours (standard mode) |
| Hand IP rating | IP68 (fully submersible) |
| Body IP rating | IP44 (splash-proof) |
| Colors available | Tan, Gray, Dark Brown |
NEO's most distinctive engineering feature is its patented Tendon Drive actuation system, which mimics the human musculoskeletal system. Rather than using traditional direct motor-to-joint coupling with rigid gearboxes, the system uses artificial polymer tendons to transmit force from motors to joints, similar to how biological tendons connect muscles to bones.[16]
This design offers several advantages for a home environment robot:
Safety has been a central design priority for NEO, given its intended deployment in homes alongside children, elderly individuals, and pets:
NEO runs on the 1X NEO Cortex, a custom compute module based on the NVIDIA Jetson Thor platform. This module delivers up to 2,070 FP4 TFLOPS of AI compute, providing sufficient processing power to run large language models and vision-language-action models entirely on-device.[17]
| Component | Details |
|---|---|
| Compute module | 1X NEO Cortex (NVIDIA Jetson Thor) |
| AI compute | Up to 2,070 FP4 TFLOPS |
| Cameras | Dual 8.85 MP stereo fisheye cameras (90 Hz) |
| Microphones | 4-microphone beamforming array with echo cancellation |
| Speakers | 3-speaker system (1 chest, 2 pelvis) |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 5G |
| AI model | Redwood (160M parameter VLA, runs at ~5 Hz on-device) |
The dual stereo fisheye cameras operate at 90 Hz and provide 3D perception for simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), enabling NEO to navigate rooms, avoid obstacles, and build spatial maps of its environment. The four-microphone beamforming array supports voice interaction, while the three-speaker system provides AI voice responses and room-filling audio.[18]
NEO's intelligence is powered by Redwood, 1X's proprietary vision-language-action (VLA) model. Redwood is a 160-million-parameter transformer that handles perception, navigation, and manipulation through a single unified architecture rather than treating these as separate subsystems.[19]
Redwood operates as an end-to-end model, processing visual input from NEO's cameras and language instructions from users, then generating motor commands for the robot's entire body. The model runs at approximately 5 Hz on NEO's onboard GPU, meaning it makes five decisions per second about how to move the robot.[20]
A key technical distinction of Redwood is its whole-body control approach. Many robotic systems treat locomotion (walking, balancing) and manipulation (grasping, carrying) as separate problems handled by different controllers. Redwood controls both jointly, enabling more fluid and natural behavior. For example, NEO can bend at the hips and spine to pick up clothes from the floor, or brace one hand against a surface for stability while opening a heavy door with the other.
Redwood is trained on a combination of real-world teleoperation data and autonomous rollouts. Human teleoperators wear VR headsets to remotely control NEO robots, performing household tasks while the system records camera feeds and motor commands. Critically, Redwood learns from both successful and failed task attempts, allowing the model to improve from any interaction regardless of outcome.[21]
The model is also trained to handle variation in tasks, such as picking up objects it has never encountered before in locations it has not previously visited. This generalization capability is essential for a home robot, where environments and objects vary enormously from one household to the next.
The entire Redwood model runs locally on NEO's embedded GPU without requiring a cloud connection. This design choice addresses both latency concerns (the robot must react in real time) and privacy considerations (home environments contain sensitive data). NEO can operate in areas with unreliable internet connectivity, such as basements or gardens, without losing autonomous capability.[22]
NEO is designed to perform a range of domestic tasks, including:
During demonstrations, NEO has shown the ability to vacuum, water plants, fold clothes, and navigate rooms without bumping into people or furniture.[23]
As of early 2026, NEO's autonomous capabilities remain a work in progress. In independent testing by journalists, many household tasks required human assistance through 1X's teleoperation system rather than being completed fully autonomously.[24] The company has been transparent about this limitation, describing NEO's initial capability as "basic autonomy" that will grow over time as the AI models improve through real-world data collection.
To bridge the gap between current AI capabilities and fully autonomous operation, 1X employs a "human-in-the-loop" approach. When NEO encounters a task it cannot handle autonomously, a trained 1X operator wearing a VR headset can remotely access the robot's cameras and control its movements to complete the task. These teleoperation sessions also serve as training data for Redwood, gradually expanding the range of tasks NEO can perform independently.[25]
1X offers scheduled sessions where an "Expert" teleoperator can assist with complex tasks, and users have privacy controls that determine when and whether a teleoperator can access their robot's cameras and sensors.
1X Technologies has raised over $125 million in venture capital funding through multiple rounds:
| Round | Date | Amount | Lead investor | Key participants |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Series A2 | March 2023 | $23.5 million | OpenAI Startup Fund | Tiger Global, Sandwater, Alliance Ventures, Skagerak Capital |
| Series B | January 2024 | $100 million | EQT Ventures | Samsung Next, OpenAI Startup Fund, Tiger Global, Nistad Group |
The Series A2 round in March 2023 was significant as one of the first major investments by the OpenAI Startup Fund into a robotics company, signaling OpenAI's interest in embodied AI and physical intelligence.[26] The $100 million Series B round in January 2024 brought the company's total raised to approximately $137 million and was led by EQT Ventures, a European venture capital firm.[27]
In September 2025, reports indicated that 1X was in discussions to raise up to $1 billion in new funding at a valuation of at least $10 billion, representing a more than 12-fold increase from its approximately $820 million valuation at the time of the Series B round.[28] This potential fundraise, if completed, would make 1X one of the most highly valued humanoid robotics companies in the world.
In December 2025, 1X announced a strategic partnership with EQT to make up to 10,000 NEO humanoid robots available to EQT's global portfolio of more than 300 companies between 2026 and 2030. The partnership focuses on high-impact use cases where robots work closely with humans, including logistics, facility operations, warehousing, manufacturing, and healthcare.[29]
1X plans to launch pilot deployments in the United States in 2026, followed by scaling across Europe and Asia. If fully realized, this deployment would represent one of the largest commercial rollouts of humanoid robots in the industry's history. While NEO was originally designed as a home robot, this partnership demonstrates the platform's versatility in industrial settings.
In March 2025, 1X CEO Bernt Bornich announced plans to begin in-home testing of NEO Gamma units in "a few hundred to a few thousand" homes by the end of 2025.[30] The pilot program relies on a combination of autonomous AI operation and teleoperation to handle tasks, with the primary goal of collecting real-world household data to improve NEO's AI models.
Early adopters in the pilot program effectively serve as data contributors, helping 1X build a large, diverse dataset of robot-home interactions that will be used to train future versions of the Redwood AI model.
NEO occupies a unique position in the humanoid robotics market as one of the few robots designed primarily for consumer home use rather than industrial or enterprise applications.
| Robot | Manufacturer | Height | Weight | Target market | Price | Status (2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NEO | 1X Technologies | 167 cm | 30 kg | Home / consumer | $20,000 | Pre-order, shipping 2026 |
| Optimus | Tesla | 173 cm | 57 kg | Industrial / consumer | ~$20,000-$30,000 (projected) | In development |
| Figure 03 | Figure AI | 170 cm | 70 kg | Industrial / enterprise | Not announced | In development |
| Atlas | Boston Dynamics | 150 cm | 89 kg | Research / industrial | Not for sale | Research platform |
| GR-2 | Fourier Intelligence | 175 cm | 63 kg | Healthcare / industrial | ~$90,000+ | Limited availability |
NEO differentiates itself through several factors: its exceptionally low weight (30 kg compared to 57 kg or more for competitors), its bio-inspired tendon actuation for safe human interaction, and its explicit consumer home focus. Most competing humanoids are significantly heavier and designed for industrial or research applications. As of 2026, NEO is the only consumer-focused humanoid actively shipping to homes.[31]
However, the company faces stiff competition from well-funded rivals. Tesla has projected a similar $20,000 to $30,000 price range for its Optimus humanoid, though a consumer launch date has not been confirmed. Figure AI has raised billions in funding and is developing advanced humanoids with large language model integration.
NEO has received attention for its ambitious consumer home positioning and its lightweight, safety-first design approach. The partnership with OpenAI and the high-profile funding rounds have generated significant media coverage.
Critics and analysts have raised several concerns. The reliance on teleoperation for many tasks means that early adopters are essentially paying $20,000 for a robot that cannot yet perform most household tasks independently. Privacy advocates have noted that the teleoperation model requires human operators to view live camera feeds from inside people's homes, even with user-controllable access settings.[32] The long-term viability of the $499/month subscription model has also been questioned, given the robot's current limitations.
Supporters counter that the human-in-the-loop approach is a pragmatic strategy for collecting the training data needed to build truly autonomous home robots, and that early adopters are investing in a platform that will improve substantially over time through software and AI updates.