SoftBank Eyes Majority Stake in OpenAI-Backed Humanoid Maker 1X at $6 Billion Valuation

SoftBank is in talks to acquire a majority stake in 1X Technologies, the OpenAI-backed Norwegian startup behind the NEO home humanoid, in a deal that would value the company at roughly $6 billion, The Information first reported on August 27. If completed, the acquisition would hand Masayoshi Son direct control of one of the most recognizable consumer humanoid brands in the West — and mark the moment the AI capital cycle officially rotated from chatbots and chips into physical machines.

What we know about the deal

According to The Information’s sources, SoftBank is negotiating to buy majority control of 1X at a valuation of about $6 billion. That figure is striking on two fronts.

First, it is well below the valuation 1X itself was chasing. The startup had set out to raise $1 billion at a valuation north of $10 billion, but reportedly raised less than half its target — a signal that the frothiest robotics marks of 2025 were not surviving contact with 2026 market discipline. A $6 billion mark for the company is a haircut of roughly 40 percent against its own ask.

Second, OpenAI had also discussed buying 1X outright, but those talks did not progress, the report said. That leaves SoftBank — already one of OpenAI’s largest financial backers — as the buyer stepping in. The geometry is notable: rather than the frontier lab absorbing its own portfolio company, its deepest-pocketed investor is doing so instead.

Neither SoftBank nor 1X has publicly confirmed the talks, and as with any private negotiation, terms could change or the deal could fall apart entirely.

Why 1X matters

1X Technologies, founded in Norway and previously known as Halodi Robotics, has carved out a distinct position in the humanoid race. While Figure, Tesla, and most Chinese champions chase factory and warehouse work, 1X is betting on the home. Its bipedal humanoid NEO is designed explicitly for domestic use, and in late 2025 it became one of the first consumer humanoids available for pre-order — an actual robot a household could reserve, backed by marketing videos of NEO doing laundry and tidying up.

The company’s investor list reads like a mini-history of the AI boom. In March 2023, the OpenAI Startup Fund led a $23.5 million Series A2 — notably OpenAI’s first-ever robotics investment. In January 2024, EQT Ventures led a $100 million Series B, with earlier backing from Tiger Global and Target Global. That lineage matters: 1X is the closest thing OpenAI has to an in-house robotics play it chose not to build itself.

The Son thesis: a billion humanoids

For Masayoshi Son, the 1X talks are less a tactical acquisition than the next logical move in a thesis he has been preaching all year. At a July event, Son predicted that one billion humanoid robots equipped with AI will exist by 2040, and that AI will require $5 trillion in annual investment by that year — figures he used to dismiss talk of an AI bubble outright. In Son’s telling, agents and humanoids will reshape labor as AI grows to represent a meaningful share of world GDP.

SoftBank already knows this territory, painfully. It bought Boston Dynamics from Google in 2017 and sold the unit to Hyundai in 2020 after years of unprofitable hardware experimentation, and its crowd-pleasing Pepper robot was quietly discontinued. Son has since reframed robotics as an AI-native bet rather than a hardware business: intelligence, not actuation, is the bottleneck. Buying control of 1X — a company whose software stack and teleoperation approach were built around language models from the start — fits that reframing far better than the 2017-era portfolio ever did.

Why now: the humanoid funding boom

The timing is not accidental. Venture investment into humanoid robotics startups has reached $8.7 billion in 2026, according to Dealroom — already nearly double 2025’s full-year record. CNBC has reported that investors expect the humanoid market to grow toward $200 billion over the next decade. Unitree is racing toward an IPO in Shanghai. XPeng committed $900 million to robotics this month. SoftBank taking majority control of 1X would be the largest single control transaction yet in the category.

What to watch

Three things will determine whether this deal matters beyond the headline number.

Does control translate to scale? A majority stake gives SoftBank the ability to pour capital into 1X’s manufacturing ramp without negotiating with a broad syndicate. Son’s willingness to fund multi-year losses is legendary — ask Arm, ask WeWork. If NEO’s home-delivery roadmap is real, SoftBank can bankroll it.

What happens to the OpenAI relationship? OpenAI passing on the acquisition while its biggest investor buys in creates an awkward triangle. 1X robots are positioned to run frontier models; whether that remains OpenAI-powered under SoftBank ownership is now an open commercial question in a world where xAI, via SpaceX-owned Cursor, just learned that model access can be weaponized.

Is $6 billion the new clearing price? The most consequential signal may be the valuation itself. A 40 percent discount to ask, in a category where 2025’s marks assumed endless upside, would recalibrate every humanoid founder’s expectations. The machine age may be arriving — but at marked-down prices.