SoftBank in Talks to Buy Controlling Stake in 1X at $6 Billion Valuation

SoftBank Group is in advanced negotiations to acquire a controlling stake in Norwegian humanoid-robot maker 1X Technologies at a valuation of approximately $6 billion, Tech Startups reported on August 27, citing people familiar with the talks. The deal would mark one of the largest pure-play humanoid-robot acquisitions to date and would extend SoftBank's embodied-AI push, which already includes a majority stake in Boston Dynamics and a strategic investment in Figure AI.

Deal Details

According to the report, SoftBank is negotiating to acquire a majority position from existing 1X shareholders, including lead backer EQT Ventures, with OpenAI retaining a minority equity stake and a strategic research partnership. The $6 billion valuation represents roughly a 4x markup over 1X's $1.4 billion Series B in March 2025, when the company raised funding from EQT and Samsung NEXT.

1X, founded in 2014 by Bernt Børnich and headquartered in Moss, Norway, builds the NEO humanoid robot, a bipedal home-assistant platform designed for domestic tasks. The company has emphasized a "consumer-first" approach with safety-redundant actuator design, contrasting with the industrial focus of Figure AI and Tesla Optimus. 1X has begun limited home pilots with NEO units in California and Norway.

Strategic Context

For SoftBank, the deal would consolidate a humanoid-robot portfolio that already spans Boston Dynamics (industrial Atlas and Stretch), Figure AI (general-purpose bipedal), and a strategic stake in Agility Robotics (Digit). The company's broader embodied-AI thesis, articulated at SoftBank World 2026 in July, is that consumer humanoid robots will become a $200 billion annual category by 2035, driven by aging-population demand in Japan, South Korea, and Western Europe.

For OpenAI, retaining a minority stake with a research partnership preserves access to 1X's home-pilot data, which the AI lab plans to use to train next-generation multimodal embodied agents. OpenAI's existing partnership with Figure AI remains in place, and the company has not signaled an exit.

What to Watch Through Year-End

Three checkpoints follow. A definitive agreement announcement, expected by mid-Q4 2026 pending regulatory review in Norway and the EU, will determine whether the $6 billion valuation sticks or whether competitive bidding pushes the price higher. Disclosure of additional investors, particularly Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and Mubadala, will indicate the geopolitical breadth of the humanoid-robot capital stack. And the first commercial NEO launch in Japan, targeted for early 2027, will be the first concrete test of whether consumer humanoid robots can find a paying audience outside early-adopter pilots.