Humanoid robots are on the rise, if the countless videos currently appearing in social media feeds are to be believed. In preparation for my book Homo Syntheticus, which will be published in spring 2026, I have actually identified over 100 companies that are developing humanoids.
Last week, the first company ventured forward and presented its humanoid robot designed for private households. 1X Technologies, founded in Norway and headquartered in Palo Alto, presented the NEO Gamma and opened its website for pre-orders. For a unit price of $20,000 or a monthly rental fee of $499, you can purchase this robot, which is approximately 165 centimeters tall and weighs 30 kilograms. The launch video was also very impressive:
But what is the reality? Joanna Stern from the Wall Street Journal found out for her readers and tested it for a day. Her experience report is sobering, to say the least, as we can see in the following video:
Not only is the robot unable to perform household tasks autonomously in the near future, it is also quite limited when controlled remotely via teleoperation. The robot first has to learn, and this is where the first customers come in, who purchase a $20,000 glorified clothes rack and then have to let a 1X Technologies employee look into their home via cameras. Even the household tasks that one would expect to be the first ones the robot can do can only be performed by a teleoperator, and even then only clumsily. Take loading the dishwasher, for example, which the robot struggles with for almost five minutes in Joanna Stern’s video.
Others weren’t faring any better. Marques Brownlee, a YouTuber known to many as an automotive and technology reviewer, summarized his thoughts in a video.
All these reports have a strong Humane Ai Pin vibe. Let’s remember: more than a year ago, Humane, a startup founded by former Apple designers, introduced the Ai Pin, which was designed as the first device for AI. The video was slick, exciting, and generated a lot of interest. I ordered one too.
When the device arrived at my home a year ago, I was very disappointed. It barely worked, overheated immediately, and many of the features shown in the launch video were simply not there. Here, too, my opinion and public sentiment quickly changed. Marques Brownlee called it the “worst product he had ever tested.” A few months later, Humane had gone under.
The last few days surrounding NEO Gamma remind me of this experience, and unless 1X Technologies immediately takes damage control measures and backtracks, I don’t see any chance that they can somehow spin this into something positive. The question is, is there anything left to salvage?
I can’t shake the feeling that 1X Technologies simply wanted to rush ahead and capture the market at any cost, instead of spending another year or two refining the technology before launching it. Now it looks as if this strategy is backfiring. In addition to Stern and Brownlee, other critical reviews have followed in just a few days.
This huge gap between what was promised and what actually happened destroyed trust: the trust of customers and investors. I am sure that many employees within the company itself felt uncomfortable with the pace and the promises that CEO Bernt Børnich publicly articulated.
Admittedly, other manufacturers of humanoid robots currently also have only a few functions that operate autonomously. With Tesla Optimus and Unitree G1, you can see the human teleoperators behind the robots. However, some companies are much more cautious in this regard. The videos from
For me, 1X Technologies Launch gives off very strong Humane disaster vibes, in the worst sense. The company could have fatally wounded itself with this and may not survive.