1X NEO: The humanoid housekeeper still in training
Behind the promise of a $20,000 robotic housekeeper lies a product still learning what work really means
The long-awaited dream of a robotic housekeeper, a real-life Rosie from The Jetsons, may finally be within reach. At least, that’s what 1X claims with NEO, the first home humanoid robot now open for preorder. The robot promises to do the laundry, wash the dishes, water plants both inside and out, vacuum, and tidy the house just in time for you to come home from work. It looks like science fiction brought to life—and for $20,000, it could be yours, arriving sometime in 2026.
The reality, though, is that NEO isn’t quite the autonomous domestic helper it’s made out to be—at least, not for now.
The promise vs. the reality
If you just watched NEO’s release video, you might think that NEO is the fulfilment of futuristic visions of home humanoid robots. Once your robot arrives in its cocoon-like box, you simply switch it on, introduce yourself, and it’s ready to go.
Or so it seems.
When The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern visited 1X’s Palo Alto offices, she discovered that everything NEO did in front of her was remotely controlled by a human operator. Nothing she witnessed was truly autonomous. In an interview with Stern, 1X founder and CEO, Bernt Børnich, said that NEO can do most things autonomously, but not necessarily to the quality that people expect. To fill those gaps, 1X plans to offer “Expert Operators”—humans who can remotely take control of the robot to complete tasks the robot hasn’t mastered yet.
Additionally, the way the launch video was edited suggests that when NEO was doing the laundry, washing the dishes, watering plants and cleaning the house, it was doing those tasks autonomously. However, only a few clips—such as opening doors and carrying a cup—are explicitly labelled as autonomous. Everything else seems to have been remotely guided.
Why did 1X release an unfinished robot?
If NEO feels more like a prototype than a finished product, that’s because it is. The real goal of this launch isn’t to sell a household helper—it’s to collect training data.
Modern AI models require enormous amounts of training data. Large language models became useful only once trained on text gathered from across the internet. Robotics has no equivalent of the whole internet for training its AI models (at least not yet). Simulations help, but they can’t replicate the messiness of real homes—the clutter, the unpredictability of pets, the thousand quirks of human life.
1X is doing what Tesla did for self-driving cars. Tesla’s vehicles gathered millions of kilometres of driving data to train their Autopilot. Likewise, every NEO deployed in a home will feed data back to 1X, helping the company’s AI learn how to operate in genuine environments.
In other words, those who preorder NEO aren’t just buying a robot—they’re joining a public beta. Their homes become training grounds for the next generation of humanoid robots.
But there’s another reason 1X may have moved early—and it has less to do with data than with money.
It’s speculative, but 1X may also be positioning itself for better leverage in upcoming funding rounds. Hardware startups are expensive, and robotics—especially humanoid robotics—even more so. According to The Information, 1X is preparing a new funding round, reportedly seeking up to $1 billion at a valuation of at least $10 billion, more than twelve times what investors valued it at just last year. A successful preorder campaign could give 1X two things: valuable real-world training data and proof for potential investors that home humanoids are worth investing in.
What 1X is really selling
So far, the public response to NEO is mixed at best. Stern’s reporting does not portray NEO in a good light, even though it ended on a hopeful note. Tech reviewer Marques Brownlee posted a 16-minute rant video—viewed more than 5.8 million times—highlighting the gap between NEO’s promises and its current reality. Meanwhile, online commenters find NEO creepy or dystopian. Others joke that its launch video could be an opening scene from Black Mirror.
But an average household isn’t 1X’s target market. Its customers are wealthy, tech-focused early adopters who can afford a $20,000 novelty and are comfortable trading some privacy for access to cutting-edge technology. If 1X can find enough of them, it can use that interest as proof of demand when raising capital. The real question is whether it can attract enough early adopters to help develop NEO and continue its dream of making home humanoid robots a reality.
Because that’s what 1X is really selling today: a dream. A vision of a near future where humanoid robots quietly take care of our homes—cleaning, watering plants, refilling pet bowls, and doing all the mundane chores we’d rather avoid. That future isn’t here yet. NEO feels more like a work in progress than a finished product. But by releasing NEO now, 1X is betting that enough people will share its vision of humanoid robots everywhere—and help bring it closer, whether by buying the robot, investing in the company, or believing in the dream.
Bernt Børnich says the first users should expect a “bumpy ride” on this adventure to help create a beautiful future where we’ll have an abundance of labour. He hopes that humanoid robots, and NEO in particular, will be so useful that they will quickly gain mainstream adoption. The road, indeed, is going to be bumpy. I don’t expect humanoid robots to be ready to enter our homes for at least a couple of years.
1X may have launched NEO too soon. The bar is high for humanoid robots, and even higher for ones meant to share our homes. These machines must not only deliver on their makers’ promises but also earn our trust as safe and secure companions.
Whether 1X’s early gamble pays off will depend on how many people believe strongly enough in that vision to invite a humanoid robot into their lives. NEO today isn’t the robot that will do your laundry. It’s the robot teaching its descendants how to. And that, perhaps, is the most human thing about it.
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