Freddy Media just put down a $200 deposit on a $20,000 humanoid robot.
It's called the Neo, it ships late this year, and I plan on letting it raise my kids.
Backed by OpenAI, 1X Technologies sells the Neo the way home-care agencies sell themselves. It wears a knit sweater, has soft, expressive eyes, and promises to handle the boring chores so the family can focus on what matters… mom’s tennis lessons.
We were sold immediately.
grandpa loves his new roommate
The hardware, to be fair, is pretty impressive. Neo weighs 66 pounds, can lift over 150, runs quieter than a refrigerator, and its hands have 22 degrees of freedom. And more than 10,000 people have already reserved one.
The plans for ours are ambitious. It will watch the kids while I watch the game. It will handle every repair I've been pretending requires a specialist. My wife is comfortable with me buying it as long as I chain it up outside in the shed at night.
The details: Neo ships with basic autonomy. And for anything it can't do yet, a 1X employee straps on a VR headset and teleoperates the robot remotely.
tele operating someone else’s robot is an honest days work
Yes, that means a stranger sees inside your house through Neo’s cameras. Why? Because according to CEO Bernt Børnich, "If we don't have your data, we can't make the product better."
What a totally normal sentence.
Either way, the use cases for robots were always going to be companionship, caregiving, security, and labor. Every futurist called this decades ago. Then the demo video shows the machine folding laundry in its little sweater, like a Roald Dahl illustration.
Mother said we needed more help around the house, but this feels excessive.
It’s that feeling (wanting the thing and being repulsed by it at the same time) that is the entire product experience.
Because the pitch underneath the creepy sweater is simple… never do a chore again. No more laundry, dishes, tidying up. For the price of a car payment, the whole category of housework goes away.
The best consumer products in history all did the same thing. The washing machine bought back tons of time. Same for the microwave and smartphone. But Neo is promising all of it at once.
And domestic labor is a bigger market than any of them. Every household on Earth has chores.
My prediction: Neo will compete with the iPhone for biggest consumer product of all time (if it walks better than Optimus).
New at Freddy Media
We've just signed Amalfi Jets as a media client, the experts in private, luxury travel.
And if you've spent any time on TikTok, you've likely seen their deals get made in real time. That content engine helped build a $100 million-plus private aviation brand and a digital magazine covering the entire luxury travel world.
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