1X has found some big potential buyers for its humanoid robots designed for consumers — the portfolio companies of one of its investors.
The robotics company announced a strategic partnership to make thousands of her humanoid robots available for EQT’s portfolio companies on Thursday. EQT is a large Swedish multi-asset investor and its venture fund EQT Ventures is one of the backers of 1X.
This deal includes the shipment of up to 10,000 1X Neo humanoid robots between 2026 and 2030 to more than 300 EQT portfolio companies focused on manufacturing, warehousing, logistics and other industrial use cases.
1X will sign individual agreements with each of EQT’s interested portfolio companies, 1X confirmed to TechCrunch.
This collaboration is particularly interesting because 1X’s Neo has been marketed as a humanoid for personal use and has been described as the “first consumer-ready humanoid robot designed to transform life at home.” Unlike some of its 1X peers, such as Figure, it has not been marketed as a bot for commercial purposes.
1X has a robot designed for industrial purposes, Eve Industrial, but this deal is specifically about the Neo humanoid.
When the company opened pre-orders for the $20,000 robot in October, the announcement focused on how the robot would work in someone’s home from descriptions of the various chores the robot can perform and how it interacts with people.
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This deal is a completely different use case.
This is likely because humanoids for the home will remain a hard sell for some time, while industrial cases are an easier sell. The $20,000 price automatically limits the potential consumer pool as well.
The Neo also comes with a privacy element that many people would find hard to swallow — human operators from 1X can look through robot eyes at someone’s house.
Humanoids also come with potential safety issues around pets and small children due to their size and instability. Several VCs and robotics scientists told TechCrunch this summer that humanoid adoption wouldn’t happen for many years, if not a decade.
The company declined to share how many pre-orders it received for its Neo bot, but a spokesperson said pre-orders “far exceeded” the company’s goal.
1x was founded in 2014 and has since raised more than $130 million in venture capital from companies such as EQT Ventures, Tiger Global, and OpenAI Startup Fund, among others.
