1X NEO explained: what the home humanoid is, whether it exists, and who controls it

The NEO is a humanoid robot made by 1X Technologies and sold for household chores, on pre-order in the United States since 28 October 2025. It is a real machine, built in a factory 1X runs in Hayward, California, but on 23 October 2026 1X had not announced a delivery to any customer’s home. As for human control, 1X says NEO “works autonomously by default” and that, for chores it does not know, a 1X employee can guide it remotely in sessions the owner schedules. 1X does not publish how often that is needed.

What is the 1X NEO?

A two-legged robot about the size of a person, designed for an ordinary home. 1X’s order page lists it at 5 ft 6 in and 66 lb, with 4 hours of run time per charge, two stereo fisheye cameras, four microphones, and Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 5G. Its joints are moved by tendons pulled by motors 1X makes itself.

On 23 October 2026 the order page lists NEO at $20,000 to own (Early Access) or $499 a month by subscription, with a $200 deposit. As an indicative estimate that is about €21,800, or about €540 a month. It is not a European price: 1X lists the price in dollars only, deliveries start in the US, and its FAQ says “International deliveries will commence later.”

Method: the dollar price converted at the ECB euro reference rate of 23 October 2026 (1 euro = 1.1193 dollars), plus Italy’s 22% standard VAT rate, rounded to the nearest hundred euros for the purchase price and the nearest ten for the monthly fee.

Is NEO real, and has anyone received one?

The record, from 1X’s own pages:

Announced and open for pre-order, 28 October 2025. The launch announcement promised “first orders shipping to consumer homes in 2026” and said 1X “will start delivering NEOs primarily in the U.S in 2026 and expand to other markets starting in 2027.”
In production, 30 April 2026. The factory post said the Hayward plant “has commenced full-scale production of NEO”, but that “the current NEOs coming off the line are being prioritized for our internal team to accelerate development and testing in homes”. Its figure of 10,000 NEOs is reserved production capacity, not robots shipped, as the buying guide explains.
Delivered to private customers: not announced. On 23 October 2026 the order page still read “US Deliveries start 2026”, and 1X’s news page, last updated with a post of 9 July 2026, carried no delivery announcement.

How much of NEO is controlled by a person?

1X describes three ways NEO is run, and only the first is the robot acting alone:

On its own. The FAQ says “NEO works autonomously by default”, and the order page says it “arrives with basic autonomy for early owners and grows in capability overtime”. The launch announcement names opening doors for guests, fetching items and turning off the lights as things NEO does “from the first day”.
Guided by a 1X Expert. “For complex tasks NEO doesn’t know, an Expert from 1X can remotely supervise its actions at scheduled times.” The NEO page adds that an “Expert steps in for challenging tasks like assembly or repairs”. This is teleoperation: a person drives the robot from elsewhere, seeing through its cameras. The owner books and accepts each session; the privacy guide covers what 1X says about the Experts and what it leaves out.
Piloted by the owner. The order page offers to “Pilot your NEO from anywhere in the world through your Mobile App & VR device.”

1X does not publish the proportion: how many chores NEO finishes alone, how often an Expert is needed, or how many sessions a plan includes.

Reporting at the launch pointed the same way. Heise wrote on 29 October 2025 that “Initially, however, Neo still needs support via teleoperation from 1X employees”, and that CEO Bernt Børnich had told The Wall Street Journal the robot should then handle most tasks autonomously: “However, this is not yet the case.” Joanna Stern, who reported on NEO for the Journal, wrote on launch day that “a teleoperator might need to peer into your house”. Neither is a measurement.

Why does 1X use remote operators at all?

Because each guided session does two jobs: it finishes the chore, and it becomes training data. The FAQ says the Expert guides NEO, “helping NEO learn while getting the job done”, and the NEO page says “Each interaction trains the base model”.

Redwood AI, the chore model 1X introduced on 10 June 2025, was “Trained on a large dataset of teleoperated and autonomous episodes”, gathered in 1X offices and employee homes. The World Model Lab, set up on 4 June 2026, lists “robot data collected with remote operation” among its training sources, next to web video, simulation and NEO’s own data. What is embodied AI? explains why such demonstrations matter.

Where does NEO’s AI run: on the robot or on 1X’s servers?

1X says the time-critical part runs on the robot; for conversation and its newest models it does not say where they will run:

Safety and real-time control, on the robot. The factory post says every NEO off the line carries an NVIDIA Jetson Thor for “real-time AI inference directly on the robot for safety-critical functions, perception, reasoning, and decision-making”, “without heavy cloud computing”.
Chores, on board in the prototype. The order page says NEO uses Redwood AI for its tasks. Redwood is a vision-language-action model, which turns camera images and an instruction into movements; 1X calls it “among the first VLAs to control locomotion jointly with manipulation”. In its June 2025 post, written for the NEO Gamma prototype, 1X said Redwood “runs on NEO’s onboard GPU at around 5hz”, so the robot could work in homes “with spotty Internet infrastructure”.
Conversation, not settled. In the same June 2025 post, 1X wrote that spoken commands went through “an offboard speech-to-speech LLM”. The order page now speaks of a “built-in large language model” without saying where that model runs.
Newer models, location not stated. The 1X World Model post of 12 January 2026 sends a prompt to “the model inference server” and runs the resulting actions on the robot. It says the model’s backbone “takes 11 seconds to run, using multi-gpu inference built in collaboration with” a partner, Verda, for 5 seconds of video, but not whether customer NEOs will run it on board or on 1X’s servers.

The FAQ adds that in autonomous mode “limited sensor data may be sent to our servers to fulfill a request; it isn’t stored.” 1X does not list which features work offline. Edge AI explained covers the trade-offs of running inference on the device.

What has 1X shown NEO doing, and what can’t it do yet?

The tasks below are 1X’s own claims, and none has been checked here on a real robot. The launch announcement names folding laundry, organizing shelves and tidying; a July 2026 post on NEO’s new hands lists installing light bulbs and zipping a jacket.

1X’s research is more cautious. The January 2026 World Model post, reporting 30 attempts per task, says “some dextrous tasks remain challenging (e.g. pouring, drawing)”. The FAQ says cooking “will be restricted from use” at first, that only NEO’s hands are waterproof, and that it is meant for use “in and around your own home and on firm ground”. Promotional videos are not evidence of what NEO does alone in an unfamiliar home, especially when a clip does not say whether a person was guiding it.

What would show that NEO has really arrived?

None of these had been published on 23 October 2026:

A 1X announcement that robots have reached paying customers.
The Order Invitation and Terms of Sale, where 1X’s pre-order terms say shipping, delivery and warranty details “will be set forth”.
Prices and dates for countries outside the US, beyond the 2027 start 1X gave at launch.
What an Expert sees, whether sessions are recorded, and how many come with each plan.

Where to go next

Can you buy a humanoid robot for your home? compares NEO with other humanoids and explains the deposit terms.
Home robots, cameras and remote operators covers what remote sessions mean for privacy.
What is embodied AI? explains how robots turn camera images into movements.
Edge AI explained covers the computing that runs on the robot itself.

Topics: robotics, 1X NEO, humanoid robots, home robots, teleoperation