While Tesla's Optimus Prime was still showcasing its small skills such as moving boxes, watering plants, and folding clothes, a startup company supported by OpenAI had already enabled its robots to master natural skills such as walking through doors and climbing stairs.
Recently, Norwegian robot company "1X" (formerly known as Halodi Robotics) announced a Series B financing of $100 million, with well-known investment institutions such as EQT Ventures and Samsung NEXT participating. After this round of financing, in addition to continuing to iterate and promote existing products, 1X plans to accelerate the entry of its robot NEO into the market.
This company, founded in 2014, has two robot products: the work robot EVE and the currently developing home bipedal robot NEO.
EVE is a humanoid wheeled robot with a head and limbs. The head is equipped with LED panels commonly found in many robot products, making it easy to interact with humans.
EVE has achieved a certain degree of commercialization. As early as early 2022, EVE completed testing in hospitals in Norway, mainly responsible for logistics work to help doctors and nursing staff free up more time to take care of patients. Last May, it also joined a manufacturing factory as a security guard and took over monitoring and safety management work.
EVE obviously runs faster than Optimus Prime. Last year, Musk stated that Tesla has produced 10 Optimus Prime engines, which are expected to be used in Tesla factories this year. Three years ago, Tesla showcased the "Optimus Prime" concept aircraft to the public, and since then, the latest technological progress has been announced to the public every year, but it has not yet started real commercial sales.
The official website of this startup company shows that it has delivered 140 EVEs to safety and fire protection company Everon, which is also a significant external delivery scale in the field of humanoid robots.
"The company's goal for 2023 is to produce 1000 EVE complete machines," Eric Jang, the company's AI affairs manager, revealed in a media interview, but he did not mention the company's past revenue situation.
Another key product of 1X, the household humanoid robot NEO, is also being intensively researched and developed. The lower limbs of NEO are no longer wheeled, but truly "feet", and can now pass through doors and climb stairs on their own like humans.
Compared to other humanoid robots filled with plastic or metal textures, NEO is covered with a soft layer outside the aluminum core, which not only allows it to walk like humans, but also avoids various collision hazards for users during movement.
In addition to directly competing with Tesla's Optimus Prime, another reason why 1X has attracted much attention from the outside world is that it was the first hardware company invested by OpenAI, which sparked a generative AI storm.
1X has been seeking to add a "brain" to humanoid robots. In May 2023, OpenAI startup fund led the company's A2 round of financing, initiating a technical cooperation between the two companies.
An OpenAI executive has publicly stated, "The timing for investing in 1X is when its robot hardware is already mature and can expand into a wider labor market with the support of AI."
At present, various technologies of OpenAI have begun to be integrated into robots. Some of the functions of EVE are supported by ChatGPT, and the built-in learning model allows robots to understand natural language and perform tasks proposed by users. This means that with each task completed, it can learn new actions and thus acquire more and more skills.
Of course, it is still difficult for robots to completely replace human work in a short period of time, which requires a lot of time for development, testing, and application validation. Just as 1X did not truly achieve a comprehensive technological breakthrough in completing this financing, it successfully attracted investors with 13 PPTs - it indirectly proves how hot the robotics industry is.
According to Goldman Sachs prediction, humanoid robots will become another AI landing scenario after intelligent driving of electric vehicles, and the market size may reach $154 billion by 2035. Research firm SNE Research predicts that the global electric vehicle market will reach $616 billion.
Domestic capital naturally does not want to miss this trend. According to statistics from China Robotics Network, in 2023, a total of 9 humanoid robot companies in China received financing exceeding 1.9 billion yuan, of which 3 companies had a single round financing amount exceeding 100 million yuan.
"The combination of AI and robot hardware is indeed a highly imaginative thing, and it is one of the few investment trends in 2023," Xia Zhijin, managing partner of Xiangfeng Investment, told Interface News.
Although the market prospects are good, the development of humanoid robots is still in its early stages, and there are still a few enterprises that have clear landing scenarios and sell products to the market.
High costs are a major reason for slowing down research and development progress and market expansion. To create humanoid robots, hardware, software, and additional customization costs need to be considered, among which hardware costs are particularly high.
Western Securities once roughly estimated the prices of various components of humanoid robots, with the highest hardware price being the rotary joint, which costs around 220000 yuan. The servo motor used to ensure the flexibility of robots has an average selling price of around 2000 to 3000 yuan. On average, a humanoid robot requires 30 to 40, so the cost of the motor is around 100000 yuan.
Musk once said that the price of Optimus Prime would be $20000. If calculated based on the above cost items, it is currently quite difficult to achieve this selling price.
"Therefore, when investing in the humanoid robot project, I will focus on examining the team's ability to provide efficient and low-cost solutions, rather than just looking at the background of the founder or research institution's entrepreneurial team," Xia Zhijin said.
The gap between ideals and reality has also increased the difficulty of popularizing humanoid robots.
According to the plan, humanoid robots can move things and inspect equipment in factories, as well as undertake tasks such as cleaning and taking care of the elderly at home. But Zhang Wei, the founder of Zhuji Power, once told Interface News that most robots have only reached a state of "walking two steps on flat ground", making it still difficult for them to help us carry things smoothly.
Industry voices believe that 2024 may become the first year of mass production of humanoid robots. The explosion of large models does indeed provide more new opportunities for humanoid robots, but the prerequisite is that old problems such as technological bottlenecks and high costs no longer become new challenges.