March 28, 2025 – At the headquarters of 1X Technologies in San Francisco, the NEO Gamma humanoid robot, developed by the company, presented a specially customized black leather jacket to Jen-Hsun Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, who was visiting. This gesture not only showcased the robot’s interactive capabilities but also symbolized the increasingly close partnership between 1X and NVIDIA.
It’s noteworthy that the collaboration between the two parties was officially announced at NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC 2025) held on March 18th this year. The presentation of the leather jacket took place shortly after Huang’s keynote speech at GTC, during which he demonstrated the NEO Gamma robot loading dishes.
The leather jacket, meticulously crafted by California designer brand ERL, features a studded NVIDIA logo on the chest and a large embroidered version on the back, cleverly blending Huang’s signature style with cutting-edge technology elements.
As part of the cooperation, 1X Technologies is sharing its unique tool—a dataset application programming interface (API)—with NVIDIA, allowing the latter to access real-world data from 1X’s office and home environments. Additionally, 1X is providing an inference software development kit (SDK) that enables NVIDIA to leverage its powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) to run model predictions continuously at a frequency of five times per second (5Hz). These GPUs can be either embedded in the robot’s head or connected externally.
Developing humanoid robots like NEO Gamma poses numerous challenges in terms of safety, flexibility, and visual understanding. The partnership is seen as crucial for accelerating progress. To this end, 1X has specifically created the aforementioned dataset API to support NVIDIA in obtaining valuable real-world data. Furthermore, verifying the correctness of the new learning codebase is a critical step, which involves overfitting the baseline model to a small dataset and ensuring time synchronization among data collection, training, and runtime inference.
According to 1X, through collaboration with NVIDIA’s GEAR (General Embodied AI Research) team, they have utilized NVIDIA’s GR00T N1 foundation model to train the NEO robot. In a joint test conducted in the home of a 1X employee, NEO successfully achieved autonomous tasks such as grasping a cup, transferring it between hands, and placing it in the dishwasher, fully demonstrating the compatibility and practicality of the technical solutions from both parties. During this process, the teams exchanged insights on action space, control frequency, and imitation learning technologies.
With the continuous development of advanced humanoid robots like NEO Gamma, in the future, we may witness a daily scenario where robots perform household chores like dishwashing while humans relax nearby.
One of the design priorities of 1X’s latest NEO Gamma robot is to enhance the safety and friendliness of human-robot interactions. The robot is equipped with a soft shell covering to reduce impact on the surrounding environment and make interactions safer. It carries an advanced visual manipulation model that can predict actions directly from raw sensor data through neural networks, enabling it to pick up various objects in unfamiliar environments.
The robot also introduces a feature set called “Companion,” which integrates a custom large language model (LLM) to enable natural conversational exchanges and expressive body language, making human-robot interactions more intuitive. Its conversational voice interface is also based on 1X’s proprietary LLM, further enhancing communication capabilities.
In terms of hardware, NEO Gamma has undergone significant upgrades, operating more quietly and reliably, preparing it for the consumer market. According to the company, the hardware reliability of the new generation of robots has been improved by tenfold, and the operating noise has been reduced by 10 decibels, roughly equivalent to the volume of a refrigerator running. To clearly capture audio, the robot is equipped with a microphone array on the front, back, left, and right sides, employing beamforming and echo cancellation technologies. Additionally, it boasts a three-speaker system: one located on the chest for AI voice interactions and two on the pelvis to enhance bass, provide immersive 360-degree sound, and play music.
These advancements mark an important step for 1X towards internal home testing, paving the way for the realization of fully autonomous humanoid robots in the future. By focusing on user-friendly interactive experiences, 1X aims to bridge the gap between robot technology and daily life, driving NEO Gamma towards broader practical applications.
