SoftBank in talks to acquire majority stake in 1X at $6B valuation, doubling down on home humanoids
创业邦 · wechat · 2026-08-29
SoftBank is negotiating to acquire a majority stake in 1X Technologies, the Norwegian humanoid startup backed by OpenAI, at a $6 billion valuation, The Information reports; terms may still change. 1X had tried to raise $1B at a $10B valuation last fall and fell short, and OpenAI explored acquiring it before talks collapsed.
The piece traces Masayoshi Son's robotics journey: Aldebaran/Pepper was discontinued in 2020 after commercial failure; Boston Dynamics was eventually sold to Hyundai with SoftBank exiting at a low price. Son has since pivoted to a "physical AI" strategy — $5.375B for ABB's robotics business, $64B+ into OpenAI (13% stake), $6.5B for Ampere, plus US data centers.
1X's home biped NEO launched preorders in Oct 2025 at $20K or $499/month; its Hayward factory started production in April 2026 with initial 10K units/year capacity targeting 100K by end of 2027, selling out the first batch in 5 days. 1X also struck a deal to deploy up to 10K NEOs across EQT's 300+ portfolio companies through 2030. Competitors include Figure AI's home rental plan, Tesla Optimus, and Chinese startups Futuring Robot (F2 at ¥36K, in 500+ homes) and PokeBot (video-action world model, $100M Pre-A led by Shunwei and Matrix).
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