1X opens pre-orders for the NEO home robot

Background

NEO is the newest machine in a line of humanoid robots from 1X. Its hardware platform succeeds the earlier NEO Gamma and NEO Beta models, which places the announcement inside an existing product line rather than at the start of one ^[1]. A humanoid robot is a machine built to a human shape — legs for walking, arms for reaching, hands for gripping — so that it can work in rooms and around objects that were designed for people rather than rebuilt for a machine.

What was announced

1X announced the launch of NEO on 28 October 2025, from Palo Alto, California ^[1]. The company described it as the world's first consumer-ready humanoid robot, designed to transform life at home ^[1]. CEO and founder Bernt Børnich put the news in product terms, saying that with NEO "humanoid robots become a product" ^[1].

"Consumer-ready" is the operative phrase. The pitch is not a laboratory demonstration but a household purchase: a robot a family is expected to order, pay for and live with, in the same way it would buy any other appliance.

What the robot does

1X said NEO automates everyday chores and offers personalised assistance through a built-in LLM ^[1]. An LLM, or large language model, is software trained on large amounts of text so that it can follow instructions and hold a conversation; inside a robot it is the layer that turns a request into something the machine can respond to. That layer is what makes "personalised assistance" possible in the company's description, because a person can state what they want in ordinary language instead of operating a fixed control panel.

The capabilities are meant to grow rather than arrive complete. 1X said NEO would reach early owners able to handle basic tasks, and would learn and develop new skills with continued use ^[1]. The robot comes in three colours: Tan, Gray and Dark Brown ^[1].

Price and delivery

Two ways to buy were given. Early Access was priced at US$20,000, with priority delivery in 2026; a US$499-per-month subscription would ship later ^[1]. Delivery in 2026 was described as primarily in the United States, with expansion to other markets from 2027 ^[1].

Splitting the offer in two separates "getting one early" from "paying for one over time": a large one-off payment buys a place at the front of the queue, while the monthly option lowers the entry cost at the price of a later date. Which of the two a household chooses depends on how much it values the first months of use.

What it means

The concrete information in the announcement is commercial: a price, a delivery window, a set of markets and a small list of colours. That is a different kind of claim from a benchmark score. It says that a home humanoid is being offered as an ordinary purchase, and it allows the promise to be checked later against what actually ships, when it ships, and where.

The part to watch is the one 1X itself put at the centre: a robot that arrives with basic skills and is expected to pick up the rest through use. A capability that grows after delivery depends on how quickly that learning happens in real homes, not on how the machine performs on the day it arrives.