This $20K Humanoid Robot Promises to Tidy Your Home. But There Are Strings Attached
She stands 5 feet 6 inches tall, weighs about as much as a golden retriever and costs close to the price of a brand new economy car.
It’s Neo, the humanoid robot. It’s billed as a personal assistant that you can talk to and potentially rely on to take care of everyday tasks, such as loading the dishwasher and folding laundry.
Neo doesn’t work cheaply. It will cost you $20,000. And even then, you’ll still need to train this new home robot and possibly need remote assistance as well.
If that sounds enticing to you, pre-orders are now open (for just $200 down). You’ll be among the first to adopt what Neo’s maker, a California company called 1X, calls a “consumer-ready humanoid.” This is in contrast to other humanoids currently under development like Tesla And Figurewhich are, for now at least, more focused on factory environments.
Neo is a whole other order of magnitude different from robot vacuum cleaners like those of Roomba, Eufy and Ecovacs, and embodies a long-standing science fiction fantasy of robot maids and butlers do chores and pick up after us. If this is the future, read on to learn more about what lies ahead.
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What the Neo robot can do around the house
Do you want to buy Neo for your home? You can choose from different colors that best match your interior design.
1X’s argument is that Neo can do all kinds of household chores: folding laundry, vacuuming, tidying shelves, bringing in groceries. It can open doors, climb stairs, and even serve as a home entertainment system.
Neo appears to move smoothly, with a gentle, almost human-like gait, thanks to 1X’s tendon-driven motor system which gives him smooth movement and impressive strength. The company says it can lift up to 154 pounds and carry 55 pounds, but it’s quieter than a refrigerator. It’s covered in soft materials and neutral colors, making it less intimidating than other companies’ metal prototypes.
Watch this: You can now pre-order Neo, the AI humanoid domestic robot
The company claims that Neo has a battery life of 4 hours. Its hands are IP68 rated, which means they are submersible in water. It can connect via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 5G. For conversation, it has an integrated LLM, of the same type AI technology which powers ChatGPT and Gemini.
The main way to control the Neo robot will be to talk to it, as if it were a person in your house.
Still, Neo’s usefulness today depends heavily on how you define useful. The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern took a close look at Neo at 1X headquarters and found that, at least for now, it’s largely teleoperated, meaning a human often operates it remotely using a headset and virtual reality controllers.
“I haven’t seen Neo do anything autonomously, although the company shared a video of Neo opening a door on his own,” Stern wrote last week.
1X CEO Bernt Børnich told him that Neo would do most things autonomously in 2026, although he acknowledged that quality “might lag behind at first.”
The company’s FAQ states that for any task request that Neo doesn’t know how to complete, “you can schedule a 1X expert to guide it” to help the robot “learn while doing the job.”
What you need to know about Neo and privacy
Part of what early adopters are signing up for is letting Neo learn from their environment so that future versions can operate more independently.
This learning process raises questions of confidentiality and trust. The robot uses a mix of visual, audio and contextual intelligence, meaning it can see, hear and remember interactions with users throughout their home.
“If you buy this product, it’s because you agree with this social contract,” Børnich told the Journal. “It’s less about Neo instantly doing your tasks and more about helping him learn how to do them safely and efficiently.”
Neo’s reliance on behind-the-scenes human operations prompted John Carmack, a computer industry luminary known for his work with VR systems and the leading programmer of classic video games including Doom and Quake, to respond.
“Companies today selling the dream of autonomous humanoid domestic robots would be better off embracing reality and selling ‘remote-controlled household helpers,'” he wrote in a post on the social network X (formerly Twitter) on Monday.
Neo looks a bit like a deflated Baymax from the Big Hero 6 movie.
1X says it takes steps to protect your privacy: Neo only listens when it recognizes that it’s being spoken to, and its cameras will blur humans. You can prevent Neo from entering or viewing specific areas of your home, and the robot will never be teleoperated without the homeowner’s approval, the company says.
But inviting an AI-equipped humanoid to observe your home life is no small step.
The first units will ship to customers in the United States in 2026. There is a $499 monthly subscription alternative to the full purchase price of $20,000, although it will be available at an unspecified later date. A wider international deployment is promised for 2027.
Neo has a long way to go to live up to the expectations set by Rosie the Robot in The Jetsons back in the day. But this isn’t a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. What we are witnessing today is a much more tangible harbinger of change.
