Neo humanoid maker 1X releases world model to help bots learn what they see

The robotics company behind the Neo humanoid robot, 1X, has unveiled a new AI model that it says understands the dynamics of the real world and can help bots learn new information on their own.

This physics-based model, called 1X World Model, uses a combination of video and prompts to give Neo robots new abilities. The video allows Neo robots to learn new tasks they weren’t previously trained on, according to 1X.

This release comes as 1X is gearing up to release its Neo humanoids into the home. The company opened up preorders for its humanoids in October with plans to ship the bots this year. A 1X spokesperson declined to share a timeline of when these bots were shipping or share any information regarding how many have been ordered beyond saying preorders exceeded expectations.

“After years of developing our world model and making Neo’s design as close to human as possible, Neo can now learn from internet-scale video and apply that knowledge directly to the physical world,” Bernt Børnich, founder and CEO of 1X said in a statement. “With the ability to transform any prompt into new actions — even without prior examples — this marks the starting point of Neo’s ability to teach itself to master nearly anything you could think to ask.”

Saying that the bot can transform any prompt into a new action is a lofty claim and not entirely accurate; you can’t tell a Neo to drive a car and it will suddenly know how to parallel park, for instance. But there is some learning going on.

A 1X spokesperson clarified that this world model allows the bots to attempt anything. But what the bots have actually been able to learn from this model remains limited to basic tasks such as removing an air fryer basket, putting toast in a toaster, and giving a high five, among other similar tasks.

This ability to learn these small tasks is the first step for these bots to eventually learn more complicated actions.

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This world model also gives the company insight into how Neo is thinking of behaving or reacting to a certain prompt which offers useful data for future training.

This story was updated on 1/14/2026 to better explain how the world model works.