1X Opens America's First Domestic Humanoid Factory
1X has opened in California the first American vertically integrated plant for domestic robots. Neo, its humanoid, is already available for pre-order at $20,000, targeting 100,000 units per year by 2027.
There is a 54,000-square-foot facility in Irvine, California, that could permanently change the relationship between human beings and the machines that share their homes. 1X, an American startup in the humanoid robotics sector, has just inaugurated what is already being called the first U.S. vertically integrated manufacturing facility dedicated exclusively to domestic robots. The structure was built in just three months, a detail that speaks volumes about the speed at which this industry is accelerating, and aims to produce 10,000 units of its Neo robot before the end of the first year of operation.
What sets 1X apart from the increasingly crowded field of humanoid manufacturers is a precise philosophical choice: building almost everything in-house. While competitors rely heavily on third-party suppliers for critical components, 1X manufactures motors, batteries, electronic components, and even the artificial tendons that make up the robot's muscular system internally. An approach that, according to the company, guarantees greater control over quality and the supply chain. As testament to this strategy, the company has already produced more than 17,000 custom motors, the beating heart of Neo's movement system.
On the technical side, Neo runs on the Nvidia Jetson platform, the same one adopted by many embedded artificial intelligence systems, and is externally covered by a soft fabric designed to reduce risks in environments inhabited by people. Pre-orders are open starting at $20,000, a threshold that places it in a market segment theoretically accessible to upper-middle-income families. Currently available functions include folding laundry, tidying spaces, and retrieving objects. In the medium term, the company aims to enable Neo in elderly care, an enormous and structurally underserved market throughout the Western world.
But this is where 1X does something rare in the world of tech startups: it tells the truth about its limitations. At least for now, Neo is not fully autonomous. For more complex activities, a 1X human operator will guide the robot remotely, observing the home environment through the cameras integrated into the device. Those same images will then be used to train the artificial intelligence models that, over time, will make Neo progressively more capable of operating independently. It is a continuous learning model, but it carries a consequence that the company itself does not hide: someone, with the user's authorization, will be looking inside customers' homes. A privacy issue destined to fuel public debate in the months ahead.
The geopolitical backdrop is anything but neutral. China currently dominates global shipments of domestic robots, and the market is expanding rapidly. 1X has declared the goal of reaching 100,000 units produced per year by 2027, a milestone that, if achieved, would position it among the global protagonists of the sector, as well as the main Western alternative to Asian production. For its impact on artificial intelligence, the 1X case is emblematic: every robot in operation is effectively a physical data collector in the real world, a living training set for future AI models. What is at stake is not just who will produce the best robots, but who will own the data that makes them work.
Source: 1X Official Website, press release for California facility inauguration, June 2026; Nvidia Jetson Platform documentation.