SoftBank Group has opened discussions to take a majority stake in 1X Technologies, the developer of humanoid robots designed for home environments. The potential deal, first detailed in reporting on August 26, 2026, would value the company at approximately $6 billion. Talks remain active and terms could still shift. SoftBank declined to comment on the reports, while 1X did not respond to inquiries. Independent confirmation of the negotiations has not been established.

The discussions place SoftBank closer to a company that already counts OpenAI among its early backers. They also expand the Japanese group’s growing portfolio of robotics assets at a moment when humanoid robot shipments are rising sharply worldwide.

1X’s Focus on Home Robots and Preorder Demand

1X Technologies began as Halodi Robotics in Moss, Norway, and is now based in Palo Alto, California. The company is developing the Neo humanoid robot for domestic settings rather than industrial floors. Neo is priced at $20,000 for early-access units, with a $499 monthly subscription option also available. Deliveries in the United States are scheduled to start in 2026, with expansion into additional markets planned from 2027.

The company reported more than 10,000 preorders for Neo in the first week after opening reservations. No units had been shipped to customers at the time of the latest reports. 1X has described household environments as a preferred setting for training general-purpose embodied intelligence.

OpenAI’s Startup Fund led a $23.5 million Series A2 financing round for 1X in March 2023, joined by Tiger Global and several Norwegian investors. The company later raised $100 million in a Series B round in January 2024. Tracked total funding stands near $136.5 million. Last autumn, 1X sought to raise $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation but secured less than half of that target. A SoftBank transaction near $6 billion would therefore sit below the figure the company had previously pursued.

SoftBank’s Parallel Push into Robotics

The 1X talks come as SoftBank works to complete a separate $5.375 billion acquisition of ABB’s robotics division. That agreement, signed in October 2025, would give SoftBank full ownership of a new holding company containing the Swiss group’s industrial robotics business. SoftBank expects the ABB transaction to close in mid-to-late 2026, subject to regulatory approvals.

ABB’s operations center on industrial robotic arms and automation systems, offering SoftBank exposure to factory-floor applications that differ from 1X’s consumer-oriented humanoids. Together the two moves would span both industrial and home segments of the robotics market.

SoftBank Chairman and Chief Executive Masayoshi Son has described physical AI as the company’s next frontier and stated an intention to combine artificial intelligence with robotics technology. SoftBank’s Vision Funds have held more than 20 investments involving physical-AI technology with an unrealized fair value exceeding $8 billion. The group previously invested in the Pepper humanoid and in Boston Dynamics, later selling an 80 percent stake in the latter in 2021 and its remaining shares in July.

Deep Ties to OpenAI

SoftBank has already directed substantial capital toward OpenAI. The group invested an aggregate $34.6 billion in the AI company through Vision Fund 2 since September 2024 and later announced a $30 billion follow-on commitment. A $10 billion second tranche closed on July 1, financed in part through a bridge facility, with a third tranche scheduled for October 1. SoftBank’s February investment plan valued OpenAI at $730 billion pre-money. As of the end of March 2026, SoftBank reported the fair value of its OpenAI stake held through Vision Fund 2 at $79.6 billion.

OpenAI itself previously discussed a possible acquisition of 1X in 2025, though those talks did not result in a transaction. SoftBank and OpenAI also share involvement in the Stargate project, announced in January 2025 with Oracle and MGX, which outlines up to $500 billion in U.S. AI infrastructure investment over four years, beginning with an initial $100 billion commitment.

SoftBank’s share price has shown sensitivity to OpenAI-related developments. Shares fell more than 12 percent in June after reports that OpenAI executives were considering delaying a public listing until 2027 while seeking to protect a valuation as high as $1 trillion. Financing the AI commitments has involved multiple capital sources, including a reduction in the size of a planned margin loan backed by the OpenAI stake and reports of a potential multi-billion-dollar bond sale.

Rising Shipments and Market Challenges

Global humanoid robot shipments surpassed 22,000 units in the first half of 2026, representing nearly 300 percent year-over-year growth. Projections suggest the full-year total could exceed 50,000. Chinese companies occupied the top five positions by shipment volume, with AGIBOT and Unitree together accounting for nearly three-quarters of the market.

Despite the volume increase, technical hurdles remain. At the 2026 World Robot Conference in Beijing, industry figures noted that embodied AI still trails large language models by at least five years because of limited physical-world data, smaller model scales, and fragmented technical systems. Most vision-language-action models operate at around seven billion parameters, far below frontier language models.

Market volatility has also appeared. Unitree’s Shanghai debut in August 2026 saw an initial surge followed by a sharp decline that erased tens of billions from its peak valuation within days. SoftBank faces its own financial pressures, with shares trading well below earlier highs and significant debt obligations coming due in the second half of 2026.

A completed SoftBank transaction with 1X would add a home-robot platform to the group’s expanding physical AI holdings while deepening its already substantial relationship with OpenAI. Whether the technology can advance rapidly enough to support the reported valuations continues to be tested by both commercial delivery timelines and broader market conditions.