Households may soon welcome a new occupant. Robotics firm 1X Technologies has opened pre-orders for its humanoid home assistant model, NEO, signalling a push into consumer domestic robots. The Palo Alto and Norway-based company lists the unit at about US$20,000, with deliveries slated to begin in 2026. The robot is pitched to perform household chores such as folding laundry, organising shelves, fetching items and greeting guests.
1X says NEO is built to operate safely around humans, with tendon-driven motors, soft polymer body covers, and a quiet operating sound level of around 22 decibels. The robot weighs roughly 66 pounds and is rated to lift as much as 154 pounds under controlled conditions. Onboard are a large-language model for conversation, audio-visual intelligence for context-aware interaction, and connected features including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 5G support. Users should expect remote human-expert guidance as part of initial deployments, a trade-off that raises privacy considerations.
The company’s broader vision involves scaling home humanoids to mass production. In February, 1X unveiled the next-gen variant, NEO Gamma, boasting enhanced hardware and conversational AI, quieter operation and a design tailored to fit home interiors rather than industrial spaces. 1X also introduced its internal “Redwood” AI model to increase autonomy, enabling NEO to navigate and interact in households with less direct human control. Early-stage trials are expected to begin in selected homes in 2025 ahead of full production.
Industry watchers view the move as a milestone for domestic robotics, yet caution remains. Performance test-drives noted tasks like folding shirts and loading dishwashers could be completed by NEO, but with visible limitations: balancing difficulties, speed that lags human pace and reliance on teleoperation rather than full autonomy. One reviewer described it as “still part human” during testing. That invites questions about whether the price tag is matched by proportional utility for average consumers.
Privacy and security also loom large. The early-deployment model features cameras and sensors streaming to remote operators, meaning users must accept a degree of oversight within their homes. Given the sensitive nature of domestic environments, 1X must satisfy regulatory and trust thresholds to gain broad acceptance. Manufacturing also presents a major hurdle: 1X aims to produce tens of thousands of robots annually by 2026 and eventually scale to hundreds of thousands. Such volumes depend on the robot’s reliability, cost-efficiency, supply-chain robustness and consumer demand.
On the competitive front, 1X is not alone. Other robotics firms are racing to deliver general-purpose humanoids, leveraging foundations like Isaac GR00T N1 from Nvidia, which debuted as an open-source foundation model aimed at accelerating robotic reasoning and task adaptation. In March, Nvidia’s CEO called this moment “the age of generalist robotics,” referencing examples such as NEO performing autonomous tidying tasks using the GR00T-based framework.
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