1X Technologies Prices NEO Humanoid for Consumers
Consumer humanoid developer 1X Technologies has announced pricing for its NEO robot, which is set to begin deliveries in late 2026. The robot, designed to handle household tasks, will be available for $20,000 or through a subscription model at $499 per month. The pricing strategy signals a direct-to-consumer push in the emerging humanoid market.
- 1X Technologies, a Norwegian-American company, was founded in 2014 as Halodi Robotics and initially focused on industrial and healthcare robotics with its wheeled humanoid, EVE. The company rebranded in 2022 to concentrate on robotics for home environments. - NEO's hardware is designed for safety in a home setting, featuring a soft, cushioned body, pinch-proof joints, and tendon-driven actuators for gentle movements. It operates at a quiet 22 decibels and has a runtime of approximately four hours on a full charge. - The robot's AI runs on an NVIDIA Jetson Thor computer, which 1X calls the NEO Cortex, and utilizes a proprietary vision-language-action model named Redwood. For complex tasks that the AI cannot yet handle, a human operator can remotely control the robot to complete the task and provide training data. - The company has received significant financial backing, including a Series A2 round led by the OpenAI Startup Fund and a $100 million Series B round with investors like EQT Ventures and Samsung NEXT. In September 2025, it was reported that 1X was seeking to raise an additional $1 billion. - While NEO is marketed as the first consumer-ready humanoid, its initial capabilities will rely on a hybrid autonomy model where human operators teleoperate the robot for complex tasks it hasn't learned. 1X anticipates the robot will be 60-70% autonomous in 2026, with a goal of reaching over 95% autonomy by 2028. - The consumer humanoid market is becoming increasingly competitive, with other major players including Tesla with its Optimus robot, Figure AI, and Agility Robotics. However, many competitors are currently focused on industrial and logistics applications rather than the home environment. - Standing at 5'6" and weighing 66 pounds, NEO is designed to be human-scale. It has a claimed lifting capacity of 154 pounds and can carry a payload of 55 pounds. - The hands of the NEO robot are a key feature, with 22 degrees of freedom each, designed for fine manipulation and human-level dexterity. The hands are also waterproof with an IP68 rating.
