1X adds talent from BMW, Tesla to strengthen leadership team

1X Technologies AS has added three strategic appointments to its leadership team as it prepares to bring its bipedal humanoid robot, NEO, to market. Jorge Milburn has joined 1X as vice president of sales, Dar Sleeper has joined as vice president of growth, and Per Selvaag has joined as vice president of design. 

“I am thrilled to welcome Jorge, Per and Dar,” stated Bernt Øivind Børnich, CEO of 1X. “Their expertise will be crucial as we prepare to bring NEO to market and enhance our products’ design and user experience.”

Founded in 2014, 1X said it aims to revolutionize humanoid robotics with NEO, a lightweight and soft robot capable of performing tasks through voice commands and natural language. The company, which is backed by OpenAI, raised Series B funding of $100 million in January 2024.

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1X Technologies adds experience to leadership team

1X said its three new hires will help further its mission to create an abundance of labor through safe, intelligent humanoids. 

Jorge Milburn brings nearly 10 years of go-to-market experience at Tesla. Most recently, he was the global head of growth at the electric vehicle maker. He played a pivotal role in building the Supercharger network and led Tesla’s car business in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA).

Milburn also helped successfully introduce Tesla’s Model 3 to Europe and establish its Global Growth team. Originally from Uruguay, he holds an MA in economics. Milburn’s responsibilities at Tesla included sales leadership, business planning, demand and supply optimization, delivery operations, and business analytics.

Dar Sleeper has joined 1X Technologies to build lead demand and brand in the Bay Area. He was most recently a product manager at Tesla, where he played a role in launching the campaign for Cybertruck and created lead demand for electric vehicles.

Per Selvaag has more than 20 years of experience in design, user research, data analytics, and robotics. His career includes roles as chief designer at Automobile Peugeot and lead designer at BMW.

Selvaag also established the Human-Centered Design discipline at Equinor Data Science and founded and led a successful consultancy in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

1X gears up for commercialization

1X Technologies said its recent hires demonstrate that it is preparing to bring its robot to market. Earlier this year, the company released a video showing how it is applying artificial intelligence and teleoperation to training its robots and controlling sequences of skills via voice.

“This update showcases progress we’ve made toward longer autonomous behaviors,” said Erik Jang, vice president of AI at 1X, at the time. “We’ve previously shown that our robots were able to pick up and manipulate simple objects, but to have useful home robots, you have to chain tasks together smoothly.”

The company has been working toward a single neural network to handle a wide range of tasks, but it is starting with training individual models through teleoperation and voice. Its competitors in the humanoid and AI space include Agility Robotics, Apptronik, Boston Dynamics, Figure AI, Fourier, Mentee Robotics, and Sanctuary AI, among others.

1X Technologies, which has offices in Sunnyvale, Calif., and Moss, Norway, still plans to work toward a single model for all tasks. It is using “shadow mode” evaluations to compare predictions to a baseline for testing. The company already has generic navigation and manipulation policies, said Jang.