We’ll Build 1 Million Humanoid Robots by 2028 — Bernt Børnich, 1X

Summary

Bernt Børnich, founder and CEO of 1X, discusses his decade-long journey building humanoid robots designed to live in people’s homes. Founded in 2014, 1X has taken a first-principles approach to robotics, developing custom motors, sensors, actuators, and manufacturing processes rather than cobbling together existing components. Their robot Neo is designed to be safe, lightweight, affordable, and capable of everyday household tasks like tidying, vacuuming, and getting drinks for guests.

The conversation explores the surprising emotional bonds people form with robots, the “quantum serial number” concept for robot identity, and the challenges of deploying robots in real homes where even Wi-Fi reliability becomes a major obstacle. Bernt shares his vision of transforming “have to” into “want to” - allowing humans to focus on what they’re passionate about while robots handle mundane tasks. He discusses scaling targets of 100,000 robots by 2027 and 1 million by 2028, emphasizing the importance of managing customer expectations and delivering reliability over overpromising capabilities.

Highlights

”It was like getting another kid - it would get into trouble all the time”

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“I had the first robot at home. It was like getting another kid. It would get into trouble all the time. I wanted to reset my house at night while sleeping and I wake up to strange noises in night like what the heck is going on?” — Bernt Bornich, 0:00

”Someone knocks on my door - Neo goes over, opens it, and greets the guest fully autonomous”

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“Sitting in the couch reading a book, someone knocks on my door. I say ‘Hey Neo can you get that?’ Robot goes over, opens the door, and says hi to the guest. Fully autonomous. It’s absolutely magical.” — Bernt Bornich, 3:46

”An elderly person refused to swap their robot for a better one - ‘I want THIS one’”

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“In 2019 we did trials in healthcare. We had someone who wanted to keep their robot and we offered to swap it for a better one. They said ‘No no no you can’t take my robot. I don’t want a new one. I want this one.’ It’s like saying you can’t replace Fred with a better human.” — Bernt Bornich, 5:51

”Wi-Fi is almost harder than robotics”

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“Wi-Fi is almost harder than robotics. The robot is significantly less intelligent without good Wi-Fi for cloud AI access. The real world is so freaking hard.” — Bernt Bornich, 13:38

”At 11 I looked at an excavator and decided I’m going to make humanoids - it makes no sense”

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“I was 11 years old looking at an excavator doing its thing and I was like, I’m going to make humanoids. And it makes no sense. Humanoid is the pinnacle of engineering - it combines every science: materials, electromechanics, motors, sensors, AI, psychology.” — Bernt Bornich, 19:02

”We’ve literally been on less than 48 hours of runway”

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“We’ve literally been on less than 48 hours of runway. Been close to the edge many times. We had to invent everything from first principles - motors, gears, sensors, actuators. You don’t bootstrap humanoid robotics.” — Bernt Bornich, 23:28

Key Points

• Designing for home living (0:25) - Building humanoids that are pleasant to live with, not dark sci-fi; Scandinavian design influence for relatable, soft aesthetics
• Product visionary role (1:43) - CEO spends time saying “no” to maintain consistency across the product - robot must be safe, actually capable, not a toy, and very affordable
• Living with the product (2:21) - Bernt uses Neo in his own home daily to catch problems before customers experience them; organizational health is seen in the product
• Robot opens door autonomously (3:53) - Magical moment: sitting on couch reading, someone knocks, Neo opens door and greets guest fully autonomously
• Sitting changes conversation (4:11) - Surprising discovery: when robot sits next to you on couch, the entire conversation dynamic shifts compared to standing interactions
• People form deep attachments (5:31) - 2019 healthcare trial: elderly person refused to swap robot for a better one - “I don’t want a new one, I want this one”
• Neo as lifetime companion (7:08) - Not a pet, not human, something new - a companion throughout life that remembers your history, like Hobbes from Calvin and Hobbes
• Social context drives intelligence (7:58) - Species that live together develop different cognitive intelligence; understanding “is this coffee cup dirty or needs a refill” requires deep social context
• The quantum serial number (10:23) - Philosophical problem: how many parts can you change and it’s still the same robot? Created concept of “quantum consciousness” - virtual identity regardless of physical changes
• Like getting another kid (10:50) - First robots in home got into trouble constantly, made strange noises at night during autonomous cleanup - “what the heck is going on?”
• Useful for early adopters now (11:39) - Robots are genuinely useful and enjoyable for nerdy early adopters; 1-2 years until ready for buying for grandma who needs help
• Became useful early (12:19) - Basic tasks like tidying, vacuuming, loading dishwasher, getting drinks for friends during board games - “bar is actually pretty low as long as you don’t overpromise”
• Wi-Fi is harder than robotics (13:38) - Real-world deployment challenge: robot is “significantly less intelligent” without good Wi-Fi for cloud AI access and teleoperation
• Inefficiency in society (15:39) - California trains could double productivity; turning “have to” into “want to” is connected to happiness
• Won’t run out of things to do (16:38) - When robots do everything, humans will invent meaningful things to do; we’ll pay extra for human-made artisan plumbing in the future
• Inspired by an excavator (19:02) - At age 11, Bernt looked at an excavator and decided “I’m going to make humanoids” - inexplicable but defining moment
• Humanoid is pinnacle of engineering (19:22) - Combines every science: materials, electromechanics, motors, sensors, AI, psychology - “can there be anything more interesting?”
• Started 1X for money (21:22) - Always wanted to do this but “you don’t bootstrap humanoid robotics” - too capital intensive
• First principles everything (21:45) - Motors, gears, sensors, actuators don’t exist off-shelf; had to invent everything including manufacturing processes
• 48 hours of runway (23:28) - Been “close to the edge” many times, literally less than 48 hours of money left at points
• Why Neo is unique (23:42) - Competitors “clobber together classical robotics” like four robot arms; 1X innovated on core technology enabling safety, lightweight, low energy, affordability
• 100K by 2027, 1M by 2028 (26:28) - Scaling targets; biggest challenges are operational - reliability, manufacturing quality, customer experience
• Factory in 4 weeks (27:40) - Stood up Hayward factory in 4 weeks from building to first robot; hired 40+ people in one day through open event
• Managing expectations (28:40) - Internal team believes they can do much more than they promise; ensures worst case customers are still happy, best case blown away
• Employees should want to buy (30:03) - The bar for product quality: if employees don’t want to buy one with their own money, something’s wrong

Mentions

Companies

• 1X (0:27) - Bernt’s company building humanoid robots for homes
• Airbnb (30:25) - Brian Chesky example of employees using product to understand customer experience

Products & Technologies

• Neo (0:25) - 1X’s current humanoid robot designed for home deployment
• Eve (6:03) - 1X’s previous humanoid used in 2019 healthcare trials
• Foundation models (20:21) - Large AI models that power robot intelligence
• Die casting aluminum (20:01) - Material science innovation for robot construction
• Synthetic fiber tendons (20:05) - Custom-developed materials for robot movement

People

• Bernt Børnich (0:27) - Founder and CEO of 1X
• Ti Morse (0:27) - Host of Relentless
• Brian Chesky (30:25) - Airbnb CEO, example of product-focused leadership

Cultural References

• Calvin and Hobbes (7:28) - Neo compared to Hobbes the toy tiger as lifetime companion

Surprising Quotes

“I had the first robot we have at home. It was like getting another kid. It would get into trouble all the time.” — 10:50

“Wi-Fi is almost harder than robotics.” — 13:43

“I was looking at an excavator just kind of like doing its thing and I was like, I’m going to make humanoids. And it makes no sense.” — 19:35

“We’ve literally been on less than 48 hours of runway.” — 23:28

“In the future I’ll invite you to my home and I’ll say like, ‘Hey, you want to see the plumbing?’ It’s going to be this beautiful plumbing… This is not done by a robot. This is all by this guy.” — 18:01

Transcript

0:00 I had the first robot we have at home. It was like getting another kid. It would get into trouble all the time. I wanted to reset my house. Going to do that while I’m sleeping. And I like wake up to the strange noises in night and like what the heck is going on? We want something that’s like relatable and like soft, something that kind of redefines how do we communicate with these artificial entities. You have to dare to like think big and like believe that we will solve this. We’ll solve it pretty fast. It’s moving really fast.

0:27 This is Bernt Børnich. Yeah. Close enough. Something like that. So you know that you’re basically trying to design something that is like a humanoid that’s comfortable to pleasant to be around. And I’m kind of wondering from your background, did that have any influence on how you’re thinking about designing the product now?

0:49 Maybe. I mean, Scandinavia is known for beautiful design, right? I think a lot of it also has to do with just like growing up being so passionate about the space and like thinking about it always since I was a kid. All I wanted to do was build humanoid robots. Reading a lot of the sci-fi, watching a lot of the movies and kind of realizing that like this hard dark sci-fi future is not what everyone wants. It’s like it’s kind of like a cheat code. It’s if you want something to look really cool, just make it like dark sci-fi. And it’s like that’s not really what people want.

1:22 Like selling controversy. Yeah, it is. And it’s like we want something that’s like relatable and like soft part of our space. Something that kind of redefines how do we communicate with these artificial entities or intelligences.

1:37 And in like your day-to-day when you’re thinking about how to design this thing, what does that actually look like? It’s a lot of meetings and trying to just ensure consistency across like the entire product. I mean I wear many hats but one of them is product visionary and that’s a lot of just saying like no no no that doesn’t work. Like I get it’s hard but like we can’t do that like we have to find a better solution. And not making compromises on these core principles right like the robot has to be safe has to be actually capable. It’s not a toy and it needs to be very affordable to actually have the reach that we need.

2:21 And just living with the product ensuring that I’m with the product every day using the product in my own home and just seeing the output right because in the end like the health of your organization is always seen in the product and then you’re trying to skip level as much as you can every single day to catch things earlier than that so you’re not sitting in their living room and asking Neo to open the door and they’re like, “Holy, what happened here?” Like, “Why is the glass broken?” Yeah. So, like, that’s a lot of the day-to-day.

2:55 And then, I mean, there’s a lot of this because we want to make sure we have very passionate early adopters that want to be on this journey together with us. So I think it’s quite important to get the messaging out there like I think we have a quite novel but also very friendly view on like how the world can be and we need to share it with people so we can kind of build that following that will help us make this a reality. And of course ensuring we have money to pay all these people and then balancing all of these but like my heart and passion belongs in the engineering and the product right that’s where I’m coming from.

3:30 Has there been any moments where you’re you know you actually have it in your home where you kind of experience some delightful thing that you would not have expected to be a delight?

3:46 A lot of times. There’s been a lot of magic around small things that just like you don’t it’s not that I didn’t expect it is where I didn’t expect it to be that magical. Like sitting in the couch reading a book someone knocks on my door and say like hey Neo can you get that? Robot goes over, opens the door, and says hi to the guest, right? It’s like fully autonomous and like it’s absolutely magical.

4:08 Is it also partially magical that it’s magical for the other person that’s experiencing? It’s a shared experience, right? There are some things like that. The first time the robot sat down next to me in the couch and we were having a conversation with a robot and it’s sitting down next to me and it just dawns on me like how incredibly different the conversation is from standing. Like it completely shifts the perspective of the entire interaction. I’m like, “Holy shit.” Like that’s so different.

4:36 When it’s standing, you’re just asking it for stuff and when it’s… No, but like no, no, we can stand and have a conversation, right? Like we are having a conversation now. If we were standing having this conversation, then we sit down and continue. The conversation kind of shifts. The perspective shifts. It’s different. And we’re not used to this when we’re talking to an AI.

4:55 We talk to our phone or whatever, right? So like there’s the obvious things like okay you’re talking to something that has an embodiment so it has body language it can look at you it can know who’s talking all these things but that’s obvious like everyone knows that right and it works really well and it’s magical. But the shift in perception once you kind of like sit next to each other instead of standing I’ve never kind of noticed it until it happened with a robot because I’d never done it with a robot before and now I start noticing it with people.

5:24 Because like before it happened with the robot I never like called attention to it. It’s like an out of there kind of experience because I’ve never seen it before. So that was pretty big surprise.

5:35 Do you notice that people like form similar attachments you know before Roombas became a thing? Most people wouldn’t expect to form like a really familial attachment or like an animal attachment to a robot. But have you noticed that kind of happen or something similar to that happen when someone has a Neo in their home?

5:51 Yeah. Yeah. And way before Neo, right, we did we had this beautiful experience back in this is back in I think 2019. Yeah, I think so. Where our previous humanoid Eve and we were doing some trials in healthcare. So we had like an elderly care center and we had someone have the robot for a while and we want to fix it and we’re like we’re just going to change the robot because like it’s easier than fixing it. Like no we’re just going to take this one. You’re going to get a new one. It’s like no no no you can’t take my robot. I don’t want a new one. I want this one.

6:27 It’s like saying you can’t have a better human. It’s just it’s just Fred. Yeah. You can’t just do that. That doesn’t work. This is a lot of these things. People anthropomorphize, right? And I think it’s like it’s in our nature and it’s quite important.

6:50 There’s a completely different tangent here on like how much like the social context actually drives cognitive development, which I think is quite interesting. But do you want to go down that?

6:58 Yes. But first just to say that you say pet and I think it’s quite interesting because what is Neo. It’s not a pet but it’s not a human it’s something else right it’s some what should I say that’s something in between like it’s like a companion that can be there throughout life and know like the good the bad and the ugly and like remember your entire history maybe shared family history and always be on your side, understand how you deal.

7:28 Yeah, I think that’s to me that’s just magical and like the closest I come is to thinking about it like if you know in like Calvin and Hobbes it’s kind of like my Hobbes the toy tiger. But there’s also a lot of unanswered questions here right like we don’t know how this will pan out but it is going to be a lot of fun and it’s going to be really interesting.

7:58 The social side cognitive intelligence. There’s a lot of development in intelligence that only happens to species that share habit and live together, right? Solitary species do not have this same type of cognitive intelligence and also the context of everything, not just the conversations we’re having, but just the context of simple things like manipulation and practical tasks. It changes based on social context.

8:32 Simple favorite example being like, is the coffee cup in front of me dirty or is it I need a refill or do I keep it throughout the day? It’s very hard to know. It has a very deep social context. And is it yours or someone else? Usually I keep it throughout the day. So don’t take my coffee cup. Right. It’s like all these nuances of life. And I’m really excited to start capturing all these nuances of human life and how they can help us build better intelligence.

9:04 Do you have to think through like in designing the robots today, if you are going to be putting them in people’s homes and people are going to be forming these emotional bonds and attachments to them, do you have to think through like many iterations into the future of what do I want this thing to look like? What do I want it to be? You know, at least the skeleton to look like so that if someone ever wants an upgrade, it doesn’t feel like you just completely ripped out the brain of this thing.

9:35 It gets weird because you know there’s this old kind of like philosophical problem, right, of like how many times can I change the head and the shaft of the axe and it’s still the same axe? And we literally have this problem with the robot where like we defined like okay the head is a name of the robot and the serial number. So you can change everything except for the head and it’s still the same robot.

10:00 Now actually what happens sometimes is something goes wrong and like you have the full robot but you just change the head and we will refer to it as the same robot even though you changed the head and now it’s just chaos, right? Because like then this is like just internal like service or whatever, right? It’s like no is that robot? It’s just like no no it’s like so we ended up with having like we have this new concept now that we call like the quantum serial number which is the robot’s quantum consciousness and it’s like virtual. No matter how much you change everything on the robot it’s still the same robot. Not sure if our users will be happy with it but it’s our current best bet.

10:41 That’s your best bet right now. Okay. Interesting. What has it been like putting it in the first few people’s homes? Like what have been the most surprising things?

10:51 How hard it is? It’s the real world is so freaking hard. Like what’s gone wrong? Everything. Like I know like everything, right? Like when I first got this at home and I mean I had the first robot we have at home quite a while ago, like a couple of years ago now. It was like getting another kid, right? Get into trouble all the time.

11:17 And also, we tried running it at night because it’s a bit slow in the beginning. Like, I wanted to reset my house. So, it’s going to do that while I’m sleeping and I like wake up to the strange noises in night. I’m like, what the heck is going on? That’d be so scary if you get a glass of water and this thing just like you just see the light flash on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, there was a lot of fun experiences, good memories.

11:39 But you know, the real world is really complicated. And that’s why it’s so beautiful and that’s why it’s so important from a data point of view, but it’s going to be a long journey. I feel we’re getting to now where like I’d say like the robots are they’re genuinely useful and enjoyable if you’re an early adopter, a nerd like me and then it gets better every day. And following that trajectory is very beautiful.

12:03 But it’s not for everyone yet, right? It is very much for early adopters that want to be part of the kind of first wave that has this at home and gets to live with the technology and learn how that is. But there’s a real benefit to that also, right? Like being the first adopters of these kind of like new novel series usually has huge benefits down the road because now you kind of like you see the world with different eyes and there’s power to that.

12:29 So, I think we’ll have a lot of very happy customers, but it’s probably like a year or two until you just like buy it for your grandma because she just needs help.

12:43 Yeah. When was the like inflection point in your mind when it actually like became useful in your home? It was very early. It’s been more like because you don’t need to do that much just like tidying stuff, putting it away, doing some vacuuming, putting stuff in the kitchen in the dishwasher and just like that’s nice.

13:04 And also like sitting down with my friends and playing board games and everyone’s just like, “Hey, can you get me a cup of tea? Hey, can you get me a new coke? Hey, can you like go and do those stuff, right?” Like you can say like you don’t need that, but it’s a lot of fun.

13:23 So, I was thinking like the most basic version is like a pet rock and then you start adding a little bit of like people have pet rocks. You add a little bit of functionality and it like vacuums for you and then you add a little bit of functionality and it gets you tea and vacuums for you.

13:36 Yeah. But I think the bar is actually pretty low as long as you don’t overpromise. Yeah. Right. It has to be expectation managed, right? What was hard was not that. What was hard is just like the basic stuff like reliability, user friendliness, all these kind of things and getting that right. Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi. Freaking Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi was an issue. Wi-Fi is still hard. Like Wi-Fi is almost harder than robotics.

14:04 Goodness. Okay. How do you solve that? Oh, good Wi-Fi. Good antennas. Make sure your robot has really good Wi-Fi. Make sure your customer has good Wi-Fi. Not everything has to happen over Wi-Fi, but the robot is significantly less intelligent if it cannot have access to a bigger model, right?

14:21 Interesting. Okay. So, all the safety critical stuff and like basic functionality runs on the robot, but some decision-making happens in the cloud. And also, if you want the robot to have someone intervene and take over and help you if there’s some tasks that the robot isn’t able to do quite yet autonomously and you have some teleoperation, then that requires Wi-Fi.

14:47 That’s been that’s all I’m saying like it’s the subtle stuff, right? It’s like again it’s the real world like you’re in your lab and you’re like this works and you put in the real world and it’s just like oh man like there’s a long way to go here. Luckily we did that like already two years ago. So we have quite a bit of experience with putting things in the real world and figuring it out.

15:10 Yeah. I find it so hilarious that like a Wi-Fi router is the difference between the thing working and not working when you spend, you know, all this time and energy in a lab and it like it should work and then the Wi-Fi is the issue. But you’re still probably routinely struggling with video calls, right? I actually don’t do video calls. I pretty much just fly in and talk with a person if I want to go talk with someone.

15:31 Okay. So, let’s make sure Neo does all the things you don’t have time to so you can travel here and have a good conversation. Yeah. And I’ll drive in my autonomous car. I can’t wait for that part. I am so excited for that. Driving is not something I enjoy.

15:52 It’s so strange to me that like I think 3 million people die every year from car accidents. And also like I thought a long time ago about like the amount of cognitive, you know, energy that’s gone towards driving when we just we don’t need to. Like the give back to humanity of just having cars drive on their own has got to be like billions of years.

16:20 I really always kind like I like to very often see the world through like efficiency. And that’s also kind of like why I do robots, right? Because I think we can create this beautiful future where everyone gets to focus on what they actually are passionate about and want to do, right? I like to say like we I want to try to turn the have to into want to. I think there’s a lot of connection between that and happiness.

16:47 And that means like the amount of inefficiency in society like wasted time that no one seems to care about like just simple things like infrastructure like you said like cars is one thing but like if your train spent half the time since we’re in California right the amount of productivity that could have given us right like you look around and you see a world of opportunity. Yeah there’s enough to do.

17:11 So for people who worried that like when the robots come there will be nothing to do anymore because the robots will do everything. I will be very happy when that happens. But I think it’s going to be a long while. There’s so much to do. Like just look around. There’s so much to do. We’re not going to run out of stuff to do. And if you run out of stuff to do, find something you’re really passionate about that makes sense to you to do even though you don’t need to. And then you’ll be happy.

17:38 Yeah. Yeah, it’s very strange when people, you know, there’s the I don’t want you to take my job, but then there’s the same people that are like I don’t like my job. It’s like the loss of something is so painful that the idea of loss is worse than the fact that you don’t even enjoy it in the first place.

17:54 Well, I think also it’s just like this desperate like human need that we all have to like belong and to have a purpose. And like why do you get up in the morning, right? You get up in the morning because you’re gonna do a lot of stuff that is meaningful to you and to others. And the others part here is very important.

18:16 And to a lot of people work is a sense of purpose and belonging. So, I do think that’s important. And I don’t think that like in a future where we have a true true abundance of labor that people will find meaning in just having mojitos on the beach. I think people will need to have something that drives them. I just don’t think that’s tied to productivity and the need to do a specific thing to survive. I think we can be so much more. And I don’t think we will run out of creativity basically, which is running out of things to do. We will invent things to do that is meaningful to us.

18:56 And I mean, we do this all the time, right? We pay extra for a painting because it’s made by a great painter. And even though my robot could paint a better picture, you wouldn’t buy that instead. And I actually seriously I think that in the future I’ll invite you to my home and I’ll say like, “Hey, you want to see the plumbing?” It’s going to be this like beautiful plumbing. It’s like this is like this guy like this artisan of like a plumbing craftsman, proper craftsman that did this plumbing. It’s like freaking beautiful. This is not done by a robot. This is all by this guy. Like it’s signed here, right? He did the plumbing. I don’t think like these things are going to disappear because we have robots. That at least that’s not what has happened up till now in society.

19:38 Your idea is kind of there’s going to be a lot more like craft and thoughtfulness and small things in the world. Yeah. It’s going to be a beautiful world. I love that.

19:49 Yeah. So, I know you started thinking about humanoids when you were like 11 and I just like I was thinking about robots and stuff too, but for that specific thing, how did you initially get turned on to it?

20:00 This is like years ago. This is not like this deep and like it’s I wish I could say something here that makes sense. But literally I remember when it happened. I always loved building things by the way from before this also and I built often electromechanical things like picking apart kitchen appliances that had motors or whatever like putting it back together to build something.

20:25 But I was looking at an excavator just kind of like doing its thing and I was like, I’m going to make humanoids. And it makes no sense. But from that point forward, so you’re 11 and you’re looking at an excavator and that’s the… And I decide to make humanoids, but like the I’m not sure what the… It is a robot though. An excavator is a robot. It’s useful in society. It’s doing something that we all want like your garden, house, whatever. It’s creating real tangible value moving something from somewhere else.

20:58 Yeah. So but it is the pinnacle of engineering right. It is taking every single science and combining it into one product. We do everything from material science, both new like ways of die casting aluminium to how to make the synthetic fibers that allows us to make these tendons in a robot all the way up through like electromechanics, motors, sensors, mechanics, cameras, compute, firmware, software, AI, foundation models, product design, psychology, like It’s every science coming together to create something beautiful.

21:35 And hopefully in the end even like it’s be interesting to see like where does this go, right? Can we create artificial life? There’s not like as someone who just loves building things in engineering, like can there be anything more interesting? Like I think rockets are pretty high up there, but they’re pretty interesting, but they’re not as interesting, right? They’re lacking some of these things. They’re not intelligent. Rockets are more of a means of transport. Yeah. Right. It’s a very fancy, what should we call it? Fancy plane.

22:08 You know, I think you started the company in like roughly 2014 under a different name and you basically are pounding away for this is like year 10. Like this is one of the weird things about this company in particular is it’s not just started 2 years ago and it’s like all right, let’s grow as fast as possible or whatever. You’ve been going on this since like 2014, 2015. What was the initial like thought in your mind for I’m going to go tackle this specific thing?

22:38 Well, this is a very simple answer. Money. In the sense that I always wanted to do this. Yeah. But I’m not a believer in like you don’t bootstrap humanoid robotics. It’s pretty capital intensive. Been working on a lot of different systems up through the years and like I had no belief that this is something you can solve by reusing existing supply chain. You have to go back to first principles and like every single thing in the robot you need to think from first principles like how should you do this and then you end up with like the motors don’t exist the gears don’t exist the sensors don’t exist like nothing exists so you have to make it all from first principles.

23:22 Actuators. Yeah so basically the actuators but also the like I said the sensors often like it’s very connected so to make the actuators you need to make a new type electronics and then you need to write the software for that new type of electronics because that doesn’t exist. Now you need to invent the manufacturing for all these things because that doesn’t exist and like that takes a bit longer than making an app.

23:47 So although I’ve woken up many times for the last decade and thought like why didn’t we make an app? What brought you to that point in time when you would wake up and think about why didn’t we build the app? We’ve been close to the edge sometimes. We’ve been on literally been on like less than 48 hours of runway and things like that, but that’s many years ago.

24:10 So we pulled through though and it’s put on us in a very unique situation now, right? Because we’re the company that actually did all the foundational research and this allows us to build something that is very unique while everyone else is kind of like clobbering together like the classical things from classical robotics and then like basically putting four robot arms together and saying humanoid.

24:34 We’ve actually really innovated on the core technology and that’s why Neo can be safe, right? Why it can be so lightweight, low energy compliant and soft while still being more capable than the competitors and why it can be so affordable because it’s just from first principles from day one.

24:55 How do you minimize material consumption, right? How do you ensure you’re efficient? Need the smallest possible battery. How do you ensure you don’t need any special alloys or materials? How do you ensure you don’t need tight tolerances? How do you ensure it’s manufacturable in few parts? And like not just doing that when you’re designing the actual physical product, but doing that when you’re choosing the technical direction for how the product should even work.

25:20 Right. So you can’t just do it afterwards. You’re that would be like saying I built this beautiful gasoline car over here. Now let’s just make it electric. No, like that’s a completely different car. Like now you need to start over.

25:37 So we actually have to start from these first principles and I think that’s been very good to us that we were able to do that very early and I think also able to foresee quite early what would be the most important things for this to have as big of an impact as possible and to me that’s back to like it has to be safe right needs to be among people if it’s not among people you’re not going to have the data needed for intelligence also you’re not going to be able to be gradually useful which is so important.

26:05 Because you’re not going to just wake up one day and then robots are going to be doing all blue collar work. No, no. It’s very similar to how the rest of AI field has moved. We didn’t wake up one day and just suddenly like now all white collar work is automated. No, we’re all more productive because we’re collaborating with this great tool and it’s like this beautiful symbiosis between man and machine and humanoids will be no different.

26:35 In the coming couple of years be gradually more and more useful and you’ll get more stuff done because you have a humanoid but it won’t do everything for you. We’ll do it together and that means it needs to be safe and like I said it needs to be able to do the job be capable but then lastly like the affordability thing.

26:55 Is that the thing that you’re most concerned about right now is just like getting the cost down to something where people are really like happy to adopt it? Now we’re already there I’m happy with that. I’d say like my main concern right now is more operational. Let’s make sure we produce them with a very high quality and reliability. Let’s make sure we communicate very clearly with our customers. Let’s make sure we give everyone a very good customer experience, happy customers, good relationships, operationally just excel, get all the basics right like security, privacy, safety, like I mean the part that the product right.

27:38 Yeah. For scaling up like I think I was watching Jason’s video right before I came and initially when you were just talking with him you were kind of talking about I think you wanted to do like a million by 2027. 100,000. 100,000 and then like 2028. Million by 28.

27:57 Okay there you go. What have been the biggest like operational challenges and like scaling up manufacturing and like hitting those kinds of numbers and what do you expect to be the biggest difficulties in the future? It’s just back to reliability. Reliability reliability. Like I think we’ve done an incredible job in simplifying the system and making a humanoid that is very complicated in how capable it is, but it’s still quite simple.

28:27 That being said, it is a humanoid and like back to like all sciences coming together to create this beautiful thing. One of the more complex things people have ever managed to make and now you need to make it reliable. So all of these systems and subsystems, they all have to work at the same time and none of them can fail.

28:47 And then you’re scaling manufacturing and you’re bringing in like I mean we brought our factory up and running in Hayward in 4 weeks when we got the building to be produced the first robot. We hired like more than 40 people in one day, right? We had like a event where like come build robots with us and we hundreds of people lined up and we screened through and like onboarded people and like amazing people really showing up to like help make this become the future.

29:13 But also like that’s a lot of new people in the same day, right? So like how do you make sure the robot that comes out on the other side is still reliable? Like these things are like in the grander things of like researching how to create like these embodied AIs and beautiful machines might seem simple but like these operational things are not simple they’re actually quite complicated.

29:35 And there’s there’s a lot to do there and then it’s of course a race to get the AI to be good enough to make you super happy as a customer. There’s a lot you can do with not that much. Also like I like your example of like the gradually evolving rock, but you’re not probably that happy if it’s still a rock in 2027. So like there’s a certain progress that’s expected.

29:55 I know the distribution of you know 3% are super happy early adopters. And I mean that’s still a massive number of people. Which like it’s way more than a million. But you can piss them off, right? Yeah. There’s many examples of people doing that if you overpromise. Like I think they’re among the most picky users you can have because they’re so knowledgeable. So like if you sell them something, it better be what you said it was. So it may just like pick up your coffee mug and open the door, but that’s what you need to promise.

30:25 Yeah. Don’t promise more, right? So are you constantly like trying to think through yourself? You know, you’re trying to move really fast and increase capabilities, but you also want to like expectation set really carefully.

30:38 I think it’s very important. You have to dare to like think big and like believe that like we will solve this. We’ll solve it pretty fast. It’s moving really fast. And when you’re living in that space every day and that’s your job, right? Being the evangelist is just like of course we can do this like we’ll make it work, right?

31:00 And now when you’re talking to your customers, you can’t say the same thing. There has to be a certain buffer because we think we can do a lot more than what we say we can do. And we just made want to make sure that like worst case you’re still happy. Best case you’re blown away.

31:18 Let’s end it on like what are you most excited about in the next 12 months? No doubt seeing more and more Neos out into homes. Having the technology I worked on for a decade actually be useful to people and yeah can’t wait to ship the first robots to what I’d call like our normal customers right so even though we have it in homes we I wouldn’t call it normal customers.