Humanoid start-up 1X Technologies intends to ship 50,000 NEO robots in 2027, CEO Bernt Bornich revealed in a Relentless interview picked up this week, underscoring how quickly the humanoid race is shifting from prototypes to production runs.
Two California Factories, 110,000 Units Of Capacity
1X's Hayward plant is designed for roughly 10,000 units a year when fully ramped, while the larger San Carlos facility slated to come online in late 2027 is engineered for 100,000 units annually. Combined, that gives the Norwegian-American company more than 110,000 units of nameplate capacity, well above the 50,000-unit shipment target.
Reliability, Not Manufacturing, Is The Bottleneck
Bornich argues the harder challenge is not building 50,000 humanoids but keeping them in customers' homes and factories. "The real gating item here is really kind of like not just shipping 50,000 units, but ensuring that you don't get them back," he said. NEO's vertically integrated stack, which includes in-house tendon-driven actuators, motor design and battery packs, lets the company iterate from major redesign to production in as little as four weeks.
Enterprise, Home And Developer Mix
Rather than 50,000 stand-alone household assistants, 1X plans a blended deployment mix: enterprise partners, home users on its consumer subscription, and a developer program giving robotics teams SDK access to the NEO platform. The company began early consumer shipments in April after opening the Hayward line and expects to steadily broaden availability as the fleet expands.
The number would make 1X one of the highest-volume humanoid builders in the world if the schedule holds. Rival Boston Dynamics just opened an Atlas training center at Hyundai's Georgia Metaplant, while RLWRLD deployed its first industrial humanoids in South Korea this week.
Reporting based on coverage from Humanoids Daily and Dealroom.