1X struck a deal to send its ‘home’ humanoids to factories and warehouses

Robotics company 1X has found some big potential buyers for its humanoid robots designed for consumers: the portfolio companies of one of its investors.

The company announced it is entering into a strategic partnership thousands of his humanoid robots available to EQT’s portfolio companies on Thursdays. EQT is a major Swedish multi-asset investor, and its venture fund EQT Ventures is one of 1X’s backers.

This deal includes the shipment of up to 10,000 1X Neo-humanoid robots between 2026 and 2030 to EQT’s more than 300 portfolio companies with a concentration on manufacturing, warehousing, logistics and other industrial use cases.

1X will sign individual deals with each of EQT’s interested portfolio companies, 1X confirmed to TechCrunch.

This collaboration is especially interesting because 1X’s Neo has been marketed as a humanoid for personal use and is being billed as the “first consumer-ready humanoid robot designed to transform life at home.” Unlike some of 1X’s peers, such as Figure, it is not marketed as a bot for commercial purposes.

1X does have a robot designed for industrial purposes, Eve Industrial, but this deal specifically concerns the Neo-humanoid.

When the company pre-orders open for the $20,000 robot in October, the announcement focused on how the robot would work in someone’s home, based on descriptions of the different tasks the robot can perform and how it interacts with people.

This deal is a completely different use case.

That’s probably because home humanoids will be a hard sell for quite some time, while industrial applications will be an easier sell. The $20,000 price tag also automatically limits the potential pool of consumer customers.

The Neo specifically also comes with a privacy element that may be hard for many people to swallow – human operators from 1X can see through the robot’s eyes end up in someone’s house.

Humanoids also pose potential safety concerns around pets and small children due to their size and instability. Multiple venture capital firms and robotics scientists told TechCrunch this summer that humanoid adoption wouldn’t happen for several 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 target.

Founded in 2014, 1x has since raised more than $130 million in venture capital from companies including EQT Ventures, Tiger Global and the OpenAI Startup Fund.