1X Technologies

Market position

1X is positioned as a consumer/home-first humanoid developer, in contrast with competitors concentrating on industrial deployments. Sacra reports Figure AI as the most commercially advanced US humanoid company, having raised over $2.5 billion at a reported $39 billion valuation with 40 Figure 03 robots at BMW's Spartanburg plant, while Tesla has deployed over 1,000 Optimus units in its own factories; OpenAI has also entered the space with a robotics division. Contrary describes 1X as potentially able to build a strong position in the emerging consumer humanoid market if its strategy succeeds.

Differentiators cited include vertical integration across hardware, AI and manufacturing; in-house Revo1 cable-driven motors built rather than sourced from Chinese suppliers, which management views as a cost and safety advantage and a hedge against Chinese component pricing; a soft, knit-covered bipedal design intended for safe operation around people in unstructured homes; and a home-first data strategy premised on households providing richer training diversity than industrial settings.

Technology

Both robots run Redwood, 1X's proprietary vision-language transformer, which processes stereo depth camera, microphone array and tactile joint sensor input and converts high-level decisions into joint movements via a 100Hz whole-body controller. The 1XWM world model is a 14-billion-parameter video-pretrained system that maps text plus a starting frame into predicted future video frames, with an inverse dynamics model trained on roughly 400 hours of robot data converting those predictions into action trajectories, allowing simulation and evaluation of alternative action sequences. Hardware uses proprietary Revo1 quasi-direct-drive brushless motors with cable transmissions instead of gears for low friction and safer human contact. Operators train new behaviors using VR headsets and haptic gloves, and those demonstrations fine-tune the models.

Go-to-market

Dual go-to-market: direct consumer sales and subscription rentals of NEO, with early-adopter pre-orders opened in late 2025 and an app through which users schedule remote-operator sessions; and an enterprise channel, including a deal with EQT to deploy up to 10,000 NEO robots across EQT's 300-plus portfolio companies between 2026 and 2030, in which EQT acts as both investor and commercial channel.

Consumers and private households for NEO; enterprise and institutional buyers for EVE and enterprise NEO deployments, including logistics, security patrol, hospital supply and portfolio-company operations. Contrary frames the underlying demand as labor shortages in physically demanding work and rising elder-care needs.

Geography

Headquarters in Palo Alto, California (relocated from Norway in July 2025), with main manufacturing in Hayward, California and additional manufacturing in Moss, Norway, where the company was originally founded.

History

Founded in 2014 as Halodi Robotics, the company initially focused on safe actuators and full-body control systems for industrial and healthcare robotics, rejecting high-ratio harmonic gears in favor of the Revo1 cable-driven differential transmission with low-friction motors. It publicly previewed its first Eve prototype in July 2017 and released the EVE humanoid in 2018 for logistics, security and medical environments. In 2022 it rebranded as 1X Technologies and shifted toward domestic robotics. It raised a $23.5 million Series A2 in March 2023 led by the OpenAI Startup Fund and a $100 million Series B in January 2024 led by EQT Ventures. In January 2025 it acquired Kind Humanoid, and in July 2025 it moved its global headquarters from Norway to Palo Alto. NEO Beta was unveiled in August 2024, NEO Gamma in February 2025, and consumer pre-orders opened in October 2025.

Risks & controversies

Reporting by The Wall Street Journal found that as of October 2025 most NEO tasks were teleoperated by a human wearing a VR headset, raising privacy concerns about remote operators accessing users' homes. Contrary identifies key challenges as scaling production from thousands to millions of units, improving AI reasoning and reliability, achieving sustainable unit economics, and navigating safety and consumer trust. Sacra notes the capital-intensive nature of robotics requires substantial upfront investment to reach scale.