Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics company 1X has raised $100 million in Series B funding.
The company will use the new funding to bring to market its second-generation android called NEO, which is a bipedal humanoid designed to perform a variety of everyday tasks in consumers’ homes, 1X said in a Thursday (Jan. 11) press release.
“Our next milestone will be scaling our data collection strategy for Embodied AI and offering NEO to consumers,” Bernt Oivind Bornich, CEO of 1X said in the release.
The Series B round follows a March 2023 Series A round that was led by OpenAI and Tiger Global, according to the release.
With the latest round, which included participation from EQT Ventures, 1X has raised $125 million in less than 12 months, the release said.
“The impact of androids joining our human workforce, on our terms, will be transformative (to say the least),” Ted Persson, partner at EQT Ventures, said in the release. “We’re convinced 1X with their NEO androids will play a crucial role in the pioneering steps towards the first forays of our technological and human future.”
1X’s second-generation android will join its existing model called EVE, which rolls on two wheels and is used in factories and other businesses to open doors, take elevators and operate keypads, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
In addition to cleaning and organizing in homes, the new NEO can be used to operate machinery in industrial settings, according to the report.
With the new funding, 1X will hire new talent and ramp up its manufacturing capabilities, aiming to produce hundreds of androids per month, the report said.
In an earlier development in this space, AI company Figure raised $70 million in May to advance its goal of building and deploying commercialized humanoid robots.
Figure said at the time that its robots are designed to address labor shortages and do jobs that are considered unsafe, including often dangerous tasks in warehouses.
When used in warehouse applications, humanoid robots can speed up logistics operations beyond the already-embedded disembodied arms, automated storage, moving trays and other machines currently being used to modernize back-end operations.
Standard Chartered Bank Hong Kong (SCBHK), Animoca Brands and HKT have agreed to form a joint venture to issue a stablecoin backed by the Hong Kong dollar.
The new joint venture intends to apply for a license from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) under a new regulatory regime, subject to the passage of the Stablecoins Bill, the companies said in a Monday (Feb. 17) press release.
Hong Kong’s stablecoin bill is under review and, if enacted, will require stablecoin issuers to obtain an HKMA license and comply with reserve and price stability requirements, Cointelegraph reported Monday.
The joint venture will benefit from Standard Chartered’s bank-grade infrastructure, rigorous governance and experience working with stablecoin issuers globally; Animoca Brands’ expertise and extensive network in the Web3 space; and HKT’s mobile wallet expertise, according to the companies’ press release.
The three companies have been working together in an HKMA stablecoin issuer sandbox that was launched in July to explore how stablecoins can play a role in the development of financial markets and payments, per the release.
Their joint venture’s Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoin will be designed to enhance both domestic and cross-border payments and to serve both consumers and merchants, the release said.
“By leveraging the bank’s and our partners’ core strengths, we aim to launch a stablecoin that can be used securely by institutions and individuals across a wide range of use cases,” Mary Huen, CEO, Hong Kong and Greater China & North Asia, Standard Chartered, said in the release. “We are dedicated to staying at the forefront in driving FinTech innovation alongside the regulators, partners and clients, further consolidating the role of Hong Kong as an international finance center.”
In another, separate effort, Standard Chartered was among the firms that participated in a pilot project called the Canton Network that explored the potential of a privacy-enabled open blockchain network allowing for real-time settlement and immediate reconciliation across counterparty systems.
In September, the HKMA said that its second phase of testing had begun for its e-HKD Pilot, where 11 groups of firms are exploring tokenized assets, programmability and offline payments.