X Accelerates NEO Humanoid Developer Access in Response to Geopolitics

Bernt Bornich, the chief executive and founder of 1X Technologies, posted on X on June 24 that the company has decided to accelerate its plans of delivering the NEO humanoid to developers. Bornich said he had been putting a lot of thought into the decision. He stated that the West having a proper humanoid development platform is too important for the future of humanity for the company to gate-keep access. According to the post, the NEO hardware, by way of being safe, affordable and capable of carrying heavy loads with human-level dexterity, is uniquely well positioned to accelerate humanoid robotics research and the robotics startup ecosystem by orders of magnitude. Bornich wrote that this matters too much and that everyone should be working on it. The post was a direct response to a post from the Select Committee on China highlighting that Unitree, a Chinese robotics company recently designated as a Chinese military company, robots are being sold on Amazon and urging passage of the GUARD Act. The company said more information on dates and specifics will be provided soon. The post noted that the plans do not change anything for home customers and in fact only make things 10x better for them.