1X Launches Humanoid Robot World Model Lab: ‘You Can’t Fine-Tune Your Way To AGI’

InnovationConsumer Tech1X Launches Humanoid Robot World Model Lab: ‘You Can’t Fine-Tune Your Way To AGI’ByJohn Koetsier,Senior Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Journalist, analyst, author, podcaster.Follow AuthorJun 04, 2026, 09:00am EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.Humanoid robot Neo by 1X, which is launching the 1X World Model Lab to accelerate "the path to fully autonomous humanoids."John KoetsierYou can’t fine-tune your way to AGI, 1X CEO Bernt Børnich told me yesterday while announcing the launch of the 1X World Model Lab. The goal is to accelerate the path to fully autonomous humanoid robots, and 1X has hired Sam Sinha, a founding researcher at video-generation startup Luma AI, as its Head of World Models to run the new lab.This is a progression on the existing 1X World Model, which the company launched in January of this year. That AI foundation model was built on video data that let Neo, 1X’s humanoid robot, turn a prompt into an action, even on objects it hadn’t seen. But now the company is scaling actual production of robots and getting closer to shipping at scale. That means much more data is now becoming available, and the goal of the lab is to turn that increasing information into smarter and smarter robots.Those robots will eventually be fully autonomous, capable of working together in teams, and maybe even truly smart in ways not dissimilar to us."You can't fine-tune your way to AGI"That’s Børnich’s line, and it’s kind of the whole pitch in seven words.Børnich says that every AI leap of the last five years has come from feeding models richer kinds of data, in the right order. Text first, because there’s an inexhaustible lake of it online. Then text and images, then text and video. The mistake, he says, is treating robot data as an afterthought: a thin fine-tuning layer bolted onto a model th...