Howdy, it’s Barsee.

Happy Wednesday, AI family, and welcome to another AI Valley edition. This issue takes 5 minutes to read.

Today’s climb through the Valley reveals:

• The $500-a-month home robot has arrived

• OpenAI restructures for IPO

• Plus trending AI tools, posts, and resources

Let’s dive into the Valley of AI…

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THROUGH THE VALLEY

1/ The $500-a-month home robot has arrived

Following its major product reveal, robotics firm 1X has shared new details about the strategy and technology behind its NEO humanoid robot, now available for pre-order.

The company is moving from research to commercialization, offering NEO as either a $20,000 one-time purchase or a $499 monthly subscription, with U.S. deliveries expected in 2026.

How does NEO work?

NEO is designed to move around the home, hold conversations, and assist with daily tasks. It arrives with a core set of abilities (opening doors, fetching items, turning off lights) and learns new skills over time through software updates and real-world use.

For now, many of NEO’s actions still rely on remote human control. 1X intentionally uses this teleoperation to record human movements, which are then used to train the robot’s neural network and gradually improve autonomy.

Neo joins a wave of next-gen home robots racing to bridge the gap between factory precision and domestic reliability.

• Figure AI recently unveiled Figure 03, working 10-hour shifts at BMW plants, with plans to scale to 100,000 units by 2029. The startup raised $1B at a $39B valuation from Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, and OpenAI

• The Bot Company, founded by ex-Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt, is reportedly raising $250M for a lower-cost household robot

Why does it matter?

While NEO’s autonomy is still developing, its semi-remote operation marks real progress toward bringing humanoids into homes. The challenges (cost, safety, and reliability) are immense, but the payoff could be too: analysts expect humanoid and service robots to become a multi-hundred-billion-dollar industry in the coming decade.

2/ OpenAI restructures for IPO

After nearly a year of negotiations with Microsoft and state regulators in California and Delaware, OpenAI has officially completed its long-anticipated corporate overhaul, transforming from a capped-profit startup into a public benefit corporation called OpenAI Group, valued at $500 billion.

The company’s original nonprofit arm has been renamed the OpenAI Foundation, which now holds a controlling stake in the for-profit entity. In essence, OpenAI has split into two:

• OpenAI Foundation: governance, ethics, and oversight

• OpenAI Group (PBC): operations, product development, and profit generation

Sam Altman confirmed in an internal meeting (and later a public livestream) that an IPO is likely, citing projected $115 billion in spending through 2029 and $1.4 trillion in data-center investments.

The new ownership breakdown:

• Microsoft: 27% ($135B), with AGI-related IP rights through 2032

• OpenAI Foundation: 26% ($130B), plus warrants if valuation hits $5T

• Employees and alumni: 26%

• Recent investors (SoftBank, etc.): 15% ($75B)

• 2024 investors (Thrive Capital, etc.): 4% ($20B)

• Sam Altman: 0%

Why does it matter?

OpenAI’s restructuring cements its transformation from a mission-driven lab into a $500B AI juggernaut. By granting its nonprofit overseer a $130B stake, OpenAI has created a governance paradox: the regulator now profits from what it’s meant to regulate. The change removes profit caps, opens the door to an IPO, and solidifies OpenAI’s status as a major corporate force alongside Microsoft and Google.

TRENDING TOOLS

• Sonic-3 > A next-generation model built for real-time, human-like conversation

• CalPulse > Snap a photo of any menu and instantly see calories and macros for each item

• Eyeball > Save links, get automatic summaries, and receive a Sunday digest so you actually revisit what you bookmarked

• Google Pomelli > An experimental AI marketing tool that helps you create scalable, on-brand content in minutes.

THINK PIECES / BRAIN BOOST

• The Internet is entering its fourth phase, where AI agents talk to each other, and the network itself begins to think

• There’s now an AI app that’ll sell you fake photos of your vacation you never went on

• Anduril founder Palmer Luckey shares his bulletproof cheat code for getting ChatGPT to do exactly what he wants it to do

• You’ll be able to pay with PayPal in ChatGPT next year

• Cursor 2.0 is coming soon

• How lazy prompting makes the AI dumber (and what to do about it)

THE VALLEY GEMS

What’s trending on social today:

THAT’S ALL FOR TODAY

Thank you for reading today’s edition. That’s all for today’s issue.

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