In a quiet corner of Norway, far from Silicon Valley’s buzz and Tokyo’s robotics labs, a small but fiercely passionate team has spent the last decade reimagining what humanoid robots can—and should—do. This is the startup story of 1X (formerly Halodi Robotics), a company founded on a bold vision: to create intelligent, safe, and affordable humanoid robots that live and learn among us, not just in sterile factories or controlled labs.
Led by founder Bernt Børnich , 1X isn’t just building machines. It’s pioneering a new paradigm in robotics—one rooted in biology, human intuition, and a culture that not only accepts failure but celebrates it as a necessary step toward breakthrough innovation.
In this deep dive, we’ll explore how 1X’s unconventional approach—fueled by tendon-driven mechanics, real-world learning, and consumer-first deployment—is positioning humanoid robots to solve one of humanity’s most pressing challenges: a global labor shortage.
The Genesis of a Vision: From Childhood Wonder to Humanoid Dreams
Like many pioneers in tech, Bernt’s journey began with childhood curiosity. “When I was a small kid, I got a hold of my first computer,” he recalls. “It just clicked. You could write code and make something move in the physical world. That was magical.”
This fusion of software and hardware sparked a lifelong obsession with embodied intelligence—the idea that true intelligence emerges not just from data, but from interaction with the real, messy, unpredictable world.
His inspiration? Honda’s ASIMO robot. In the early 2000s, ASIMO captivated global audiences with its human-like gait, ability to climb stairs, and even serve drinks. But for Bernt, ASIMO’s true magic wasn’t its engineering—it was its social presence. “It wasn’t an industrial automation system. It was straight out of Star Wars,” he says. “It could walk around, hand you water, interact with people.”
Yet ASIMO ultimately failed to scale. Why? Because it was built on the classical robotics regime: rigid, gear-heavy, assumption-dependent systems that only worked in highly controlled environments. “It had to assume the world was static,” Bernt explains. “But real life is creative chaos.”
That failure became 1X’s founding insight.
Rethinking Robotics: The Tendon-Driven Revolution
Most industrial robots rely on high-ratio gear systems—often 100:1—where a motor spins at 20,000 RPM to move an arm slowly. The problem? Kinetic energy. As Bernt points out, kinetic energy scales with the square of velocity. Double the speed, quadruple the energy—and the danger.
“In a factory, you can stop the robot before it touches anything,” he says. “But in your home? You don’t know where the cat is, where the kid dropped a toy, or if the floor is wet. You need robots that are soft, compliant, and low-energy—just like humans.”
Enter 1X’s breakthrough: tendon-driven actuation. Instead of rigid gears, 1X uses cable-like tendons inspired by human musculature. This design drastically reduces inertia, making collisions safe—for people, furniture, and the robot itself.
“It’s not that no one has tried tendon drives before,” Bernt admits. “But no one has sunk a decade into making it work at scale. That’s our moat.”
This isn’t just theoretical. In real-world home trials, 1X robots learned that even simple tasks—like opening a fridge—are deeply social. You must signal intent, avoid bumping into others, and move predictably. “You can’t separate labor from social interaction,” Bernt says. “In human spaces, all labor is social labor.”
The Hardest Lesson: Embracing Failure as Fuel
No startup story is complete without near-collapse—and 1X’s came in 2020.
After years of bootstrapping and slow progress, the team had finally secured a major funding round. “We were one signature away,” Bernt recalls. Then, COVID-19 hit.
Overnight, investors froze. With no cash runway, 1X was forced to halve its team—including engineers who had relocated to Norway, leaving careers and families behind to join the dream. “Letting them go was the most painful thing I’ve ever done as a founder,” Bernt says.
Yet this crisis reinforced 1X’s core cultural tenet: failure is acceptable; not trying is not.
“We tell our team: if you gave it everything and reflected on why it failed, then celebrate it,” Bernt insists. “That’s how we make progress.”
This mindset isn’t just feel-good philosophy—it’s operational necessity. In deep tech, especially robotics, most early experiments will fail. The key is creating a culture where engineers aren’t punished for bold attempts, even if they end in a robot face-planting into a wall of balloons during a keynote (a real incident Bernt recounts with a laugh).
“Can you keep this culture under pressure?” he challenges. “If yes, you get great innovation.”
Learning Like Humans: Teleoperation, Simulation, and Real-World Trials
So how does a robot learn to fetch a Coke from the fridge?
Not through pre-programmed scripts—but through embodied learning.
1X uses a three-pronged approach:
- Internet-scale data (videos, instructions, human behavior patterns)
- Synthetic simulation (virtual environments to test millions of scenarios)
- Teleoperation—where a human “pilots” the robot in real time, seeing through its eyes and moving its limbs.
“It’s like your hands are somewhere else in the world,” Bernt describes. “You’re transferring human intuition directly into the machine.”
Once the robot gains basic competence, it begins autonomous trial-and-error learning in real homes. Each stumble, each misstep, feeds back into its neural networks. Over time, behaviors emerge—not from top-down coding, but from bottom-up experience.
This mirrors how children learn: through interaction, feedback, and repetition. And crucially, it requires robots to be safe enough to fail—which brings us back to 1X’s low-energy design.
Why Consumer First? The ChatGPT Blueprint for Robotics
Here’s a counterintuitive truth: enterprise is not the gateway to scale for radical innovation.
Bernt draws a parallel to OpenAI’s journey with ChatGPT. “They tried selling to enterprises for years. Nothing stuck. Then they released ChatGPT to consumers—and users brought it to work themselves.”
Employees loved it so much, they threatened to quit if banned. That bottom-up pressure forced enterprises to adopt it—after proving its value in the wild.
1X is betting the same will happen with humanoid robots. “If you want adoption in years, not decades, you must start with consumers,” Bernt argues. “Enterprises are risk-averse. IT departments, unions, compliance—they slow everything down.”
Instead, 1X is targeting early adopters: tech enthusiasts, aging populations needing assistance, and households eager to offload chores. These users provide real-world data, emotional feedback, and viral momentum.
Once the robot proves useful at home, businesses—from elder care to logistics—will demand it. But the spark must come from people, not procurement officers.
Building a Factory from Scratch: The Deep Tech Grind
Unlike many robotics startups that integrate off-the-shelf parts, 1X builds everything in-house—motors, tendons, control systems, even the machines that manufacture those components.
Why? Because the parts they need don’t exist.
“We’ve spent 10 years not just building robots, but building the means to build robots,” Bernt explains. This includes designing lightweight structures, avoiding rare alloys, and minimizing part count to match the complexity of a household appliance—not a car.
Engineers sit side-by-side with factory technicians. Design, manufacturing, and automation teams share one room. “Simplify, simplify, simplify,” is the mantra.
It’s grueling, capital-intensive work. But it ensures control, scalability, and cost reduction—critical for making robots affordable, not just impressive.
The Bigger Mission: Solving the Labor Crisis
Behind the tech is a profound humanitarian vision.
“Humanity has mastered energy,” Bernt says. “Flip a switch, and light appears. Now, we must do the same for physical labor.”
With global birth rates plummeting and aging populations swelling, there simply aren’t enough humans to care for the elderly, stock shelves, or maintain infrastructure. “Everything is limited by labor,” he warns.
1X’s mission? Create an abundance of labor through intelligent machines—freeing humans to focus on creativity, connection, and what makes us truly human.
This isn’t about replacing people. It’s about augmenting human potential—so we can spend less time on chores and more time on each other.
The Founder’s Mantra: Have Fun or Go Home
Finally, Bernt offers advice every aspiring founder should hear: focus on what makes you happy.
“Yes, it’s grind, grind, grind,” he admits. “There will be dark days. But if you’re not having fun, you won’t last.”
His “cheat code”? Pick a problem that excites people.
“Humanoid robots are freaking cool,” he grins. “People walk in, see a robot say ‘hi,’ and instantly want to join the mission.”
That emotional resonance—wonder, purpose, joy—is what sustains teams through technical setbacks and funding droughts. It’s why 1X’s startup story isn’t just about engineering. It’s about humanity.
The Road Ahead: From Prototype to Everyday Companion
As of 2025, 1X is preparing for its first consumer-scale deployments. While details remain under wraps, Bernt hints at a product that’s “very useful” launching this year—with broader impact unfolding over the next few.
The dream? A world where humanoid robots are as common as refrigerators—quietly handling chores, assisting the vulnerable, and learning alongside us.
It’s a long road. But as Bernt puts it: “As long as I get to do this, I think I’ll be pretty happy.”
And in a world hungry for both innovation and meaning, that might be the most powerful startup story of all.
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