Humanoids at work
Humanoids at work
Chinese manufacturers are ahead on hardware. The money is going to Western companies that are behind them.
Humanoids are on production lines and in warehouses today, at BMW, Foxconn and Amazon. Chinese manufacturers are ahead on hardware, and Western companies are the ones raising the money.
Not all of it is industrial. 1X has opened pre-orders for NEO, a humanoid built for the home, with first deliveries in 2026. China wrote humanoid robots into its elder care policy in December 2024 and now runs a national pilot placing them in households and care homes. Its population over 60 has passed 300 million. Norway will be short 42,400 full-time positions in health and care by 2040, on SSB's projection.
Europe's position is standards, safety certification and a large installed base of collaborative robots. Nobody has shown that this becomes a route to scale rather than a niche. 1X started in Moss and is headquartered in California. And certification does not decide whether people will let one of these into their workplace, or their home.
A robot or two will be in the room. You can decide for yourself whether you would stand next to one.
Speakers
Per Ivar Selvaag was VP of Design at 1X Technologies, where he led the design of the NEO home humanoid, and a lead designer at BMW before that. He will argue that the uncanny valley is a business problem, not an aesthetic one.
Christian Rokseth is an entrepeneur and investor and was the first investor in 1x, and has since invested in around 55 Norwegian startups, many within robotics and AI. He also runs Humanoid.guide, which tracks the humanoid market company by company. He will give an overview of the current status of the fast moving Humanoid market.
Sigrid Schaanning rolls out autonomous robots for Cognite's industrial customers and has been named one of Norway's Top 50 Women in Tech. She brings lessons from deploying robots at multiple industrial sites worldwide, including what they do at the Robot Garden at Fornebu, a facility where robots train on industrial equipment brought in from real sites.
Lars-Fredrik Forberg gives a short market intro. He is CEO of Kinetic Blocks, a marketplace for humanoid robot training data that opened its beta in September.
Marcus Horn joins the panel. He is CEO and co-founder of dotspot, which enables industrial workers to capture what they do and automate all administration and knowledge transfer. The work is captured through body-worn cameras as first-person video – the common denominator between humans and humanoids.
Lone Werness Bekkeheien joins the panel. She is founder and CEO of Marselia Robotics, which builds software that lets industrial robots handle variation instead of repeating identical movements.
Julian Hahn runs a live demo. He is building what Wybe calls a robotic employee: software that runs on the customer's own device and handles calls, follow-ups and operations around the clock in more than 30 languages, with an optional humanoid body. Wybe Robotics is based in Moss.
A panel and questions from the floor, and then Julian Hahn's live demo closes the day.
Practical
The event runs in English. Hosted by Startuplab and the IMD Alumni Club of Norway
We approve registrations one by one. The event is for Startuplab's corporate partners, founders in this field, selected individuals and the IMD Alumni Club of Norway.