SoftBank Moves to Take Majority Control of 1X Technologies at a $6 Billion Valuation

The humanoid robot land grab is accelerating — and SoftBank wants a controlling position before the category consolidates.

Masayoshi Son's SoftBank Group is in active talks to acquire a majority stake in 1X Technologies, a Norwegian humanoid robotics startup, at a valuation of about $6 billion, according to sources cited by The Information. The deal has not been finalized as of August 28, 2026, and neither SoftBank nor 1X has provided public confirmation of terms. What the talks confirm, regardless of outcome, is that the race for embodied AI infrastructure has moved from lab demos to balance-sheet warfare.

What 1X Actually Builds

1X Technologies is not a speculative moonshot. The company develops home-service humanoid robots and has pre-orders open for its flagship NEO model — a consumer-facing product aimed at domestic use cases. That positioning matters. Most humanoid robot makers have targeted industrial and warehouse environments, where task repetition is high and tolerance for robotic error is somewhat quantifiable. Home service is harder: unstructured environments, proximity to people, variable tasks. If 1X has pre-orders open for NEO, it is further along the commercialization curve than most of its peers.

The company is not without pedigree. OpenAI previously invested in 1X through the OpenAI Startup Fund in 2023, alongside Tiger Global and Norway-based investors. An OpenAI-backed cap table signals early conviction that 1X's approach to combining AI models with physical hardware was credible — not just that the startup had good pitch materials.

SoftBank's Embodied AI Thesis

SoftBank's interest in 1X is not a one-off. The talks reflect a deliberate strategy to expand aggressively into embodied AI and humanoid robotics as a category. Son has long framed SoftBank as a bet on the singularity — the moment artificial general intelligence reshapes economic life. Humanoid robots are the physical layer of that thesis: AI that doesn't just generate text or images but moves through the world, handles objects, and performs labor.

Acquiring a majority stake is a different commitment than writing a check into a funding round. Majority control means SoftBank would not be a passive financial backer — it would own the governance structure of the company. That level of conviction, at a $6 billion valuation for a startup still in pre-order phase, tells you how Son is pricing the optionality of owning a platform before the market prices in its scale.

SoftBank's pattern in prior technology cycles — early, large, and controlling where possible — maps directly onto what these talks represent. The valuation is high relative to current revenue visibility, but the bet is not on what 1X earns today. It is on what the home-service robotics market looks like when NEO or its successors ship at volume.

The Valuation and What It Implies

Six billion dollars for a humanoid robotics startup with pre-orders — not shipped units — is a stake in infrastructure, not earnings. It reflects a broader market dynamic: the window to acquire meaningful positions in frontier robotics companies at non-public-market prices is narrowing. Alphabet, Amazon, and a set of well-funded pure-play startups are all building in adjacent spaces. The competitive logic for a buyer like SoftBank is asymmetric — overpaying modestly now is cheaper than bidding against a crowded field later.

OpenAI's prior investment through its Startup Fund also creates an interesting thread. OpenAI's models are central to the AI stack that humanoid robots will depend on for reasoning and task execution. If SoftBank takes majority control of 1X, the relationship between SoftBank's portfolio, OpenAI's technology, and the physical robot layer becomes tighter — and potentially more strategically complicated for all parties.

The Bigger Shift

What the 1X talks signal most clearly is that humanoid robotics is leaving the pilot phase. When deals are structured as majority acquisitions at $6 billion — rather than seed checks or minority growth rounds — it means the category is being priced as real infrastructure, not research. SoftBank betting on a Norwegian startup with an OpenAI cap table and consumer pre-orders open is a specific claim: that home-service humanoid robots will be a mass-market product category, and that the time to own the platform is now, not after the first million units ship.

If the deal closes, 1X becomes one of the most heavily capitalized humanoid robotics companies in the world — with a majority owner whose stated strategy is to accelerate embodied AI as aggressively as possible. The rest of the field will be watching the terms closely.