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Investor Chris Camillo Shifts from Skeptic to Believer After 1X Visit
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A recent visit to the Palo Alto headquarters of robotics firm 1X has reportedly converted one of the humanoid sector's most prominent investors from a skeptic into a believer. Chris Camillo, a host of the popular investing show Dumb Money, spent half a day with the company and its NEO robots, an experience that he says fundamentally changed his thesis on their unconventional technology.
Camillo was accompanied by robotics expert Scott Walter, known on X as the "Humanoid Botangelist" (@GoingBallistic5), who also came away impressed, particularly with the robot's teleoperation capabilities.
From Skepticism to Conviction
Speaking on a recent episode of Dumb Money, Camillo admitted he had previously been wary of 1X's unique design philosophy. Unlike the rigid, actuator-driven exoskeletons common among competitors like Figure and Tesla, 1X's NEO robot employs a full-body, tendon-driven system within a soft, lightweight shell.
"I didn't buy into the unconventional architecture," Camillo stated, explaining that the robotics community has long held that such systems are difficult to maintain and scale. The core challenge is that artificial tendons, unlike biological ones, can fray and break down without a self-repair mechanism.
However, after seeing the system up close and speaking with 1X founder and CEO Bernt Børnich, Camillo's perspective shifted. "I think that the industry has misjudged 1X based on what I saw and learned," he said. He described Børnich as a "mad scientist of tendon research" who, after a decade of work, may have solved the key durability problems.
The In-Home Advantage
The primary benefit of 1X's approach, according to Camillo, is safety. The tendon-based architecture results in a robot that is "meaningfully lighter and meaningfully safer to be around humans, not in five years, but right now."
This led Camillo to a major revision of his industry outlook. "I have a major change in my thesis for home robotics," he announced. "For a long time, I've been saying that we are years and years out from seeing a bot in the home for very good reasons: safety." He now believes 1X is the one company with an architecture that could allow for deployment in homes as early as 2026, combining autonomous functions with human-in-the-loop teleoperation to gather crucial training data.
An Expert's Corroboration
Scott Walter, a robotics software pioneer, provided a technical endorsement of the 1X system. After teleoperating a NEO robot himself, he shared his positive assessment on X, calling the teleoperation experience "the best I've experienced so far."
Chris and Scott's Excellent Adventure Last Thursday @ChrisCamillo and I had the pleasure of meeting Neo and @BerntBornich at the new @1x_tech HQ in Palo Alto After Neo grabbed us waters from the frig, I was offered the chance to teleoperate Neo myself I was impressed🧵
Walter praised the system's low latency, intuitive interface, and quick calibration. He noted that the robot passed both his "wrist touching calibration test" and "elbow tracking test"—benchmarks that other systems have failed. "Full body tracking is quite good," he added.
A Pattern of Winning Over Visitors
This is not the first time a high-profile visit has generated buzz for 1X. The company recently hosted online streamer IShowSpeed for a chaotic, unscripted live demonstration that showcased the NEO robot's resilience and teleoperation prowess. Together, these visits suggest a deliberate strategy of using in-person demonstrations to win over influencers from different fields, from internet culture to finance and robotics engineering.
While impressed with 1X, Camillo remains invested in other players, noting he is still "super hyped" on Apptronik and expects the Texas-based company to "come out of stealth" with major developments in 2026.
For now, however, the visit appears to have repositioned 1X in the eyes of at least one key observer. What was once seen as a strange and risky design is now being framed as a potential masterstroke for cracking the consumer market.